“It is so long ago,” he muttered brokenly. “So many things have occurred since. I have forgotten. I—I can only be sure that I received no letters from you.”
“You have forgotten!” she repeated slowly.
“Yes—that is, I suffered a good deal from a broken leg—it was badly set—that is why I have such a noticeable hobble. Events round about that period are all jumbled up in my mind.”
The explanation was lame as his leg. It would never have deceived even the Nancy Willard of bygone years, and was utterly thrown away on this wide-eyed woman. She was conscious of a fierce pain somewhere in the region of her heart, and wanted to cry aloud in her distress; but she crushed the impulse with a self-restraint that had become second nature, and bent nearer, smiling wanly.
“Why did you throw away your cigar, Derry?” she said. “Please smoke. Like every other man, you will talk more easily then. And do tell me what has been going on at Bison. I have often asked Hugh for news; but he says he never hears a word about the place since he sold his interests there.”
Power hardly realized how swiftly and certainly she had made smooth the way. He was conscious only of a vast relief that the subject of the missing correspondence was dropped. Only in later hours of quiet reflection did he grasp the reason—that she was bitterly aware of the truth, and the whole truth. He began at once to describe developments on the ranch, and was too wishful to hide his own confusion behind the smoke of a cigar to notice how a white-gloved hand clenched the arm of a chair when he spoke of his mother and the place she filled in public esteem. Unconsciously he was telling Nancy just what she wanted to know. He was not married. There was no other woman! She uttered no sound; but her lower lip bore a series of white marks for a little while.
“You see,” he explained glibly, “I acquired the habit of letting other people work when I was laid by for repairs. Please excuse these frequent references to a broken limb, which seems to figure in my talk much as King Charles’s head in Mr. Dick’s disjointed manuscripts. Anyhow, I had plenty of time for reading, as the mine paid from the very beginning, and a rock spring which nearly scared Mac stiff came in handy to irrigate the upper part of the ranch—that long slope just below the Gulch, you remember.”
“Yes, I remember,” she said.
“Well, what between fruit-growing and horse-breeding, I hardly ever have time to go near Bison. My mother drives in every day over the new trail——”
“What new trail?”