While he was planning what he would do to face this unforeseen development, a boy from the hotel handed him a note. Harley's heart jumped when he saw that it was in the handwriting of Sylvia Morgan, and it fluttered still further when she asked to see him in the hotel parlor for a few minutes. He was apprehensive, too, because if she had anything good to tell him she certainly would not send for him.
Sylvia was sitting in the parlor beside a window that looked out upon a vast range of snow-covered mountains, rising like the serrated teeth of a saw, and, although she heard his footsteps, she did not turn her face until Harley stood beside her. Then she said, irrelevantly:
"Isn't that a grand view!"
"You did not send for me to tell me that," said Harley, with a certain protecting tenderness in his tone, because what he took to be the sadness in her face appealed to his manly qualities.
"No, I did not. I have been thinking over what we said to each other when we were coming back from Crow's Wing, and I have concluded that it was wrong."
"Why was it wrong? I love you, and I had the right to tell you so."
"No, you did not. You would have had were I free, but I am promised to another. I was wrong to let you speak; I was wrong to listen to you."
"I will not admit it," said Harley, doggedly, "because Mr. Plummer is going to give you up. He will see that he ought not to hold you to this promise."
She smiled sadly.
"I must be loyal to him," she said, "and before starting for Salt Lake City I want to tell you that you must not again speak to me of this."