“What are you talking of?” demanded Overton, blankly. He had not heard one-half of a very carefully worded idea of Mr. Haydon’s. “Max married! To whom?”
“You are not a very flattering listener,” remarked the other, dryly, “and don’t show much interest in the love affairs of your protégeé; but it was of her I was speaking.”
“You—you would try to marry her to Max Lyster—marry her!” and his voice sounded in his own ears as strange and far away.
“Well, it is not an unusual prophecy to make of a young girl, is it?” asked Mr. Haydon, with an attempt to be jocular. “And I don’t know where she could find a better young fellow. From his discourses concerning her on our journey here and his evident devotion since our arrival, I fancy the idea is not so new to him as it seems to be to you, Mr. Overton.”
“Nonsense! when she is well, they quarrel as often as they agree—oftener.”
“That is no proof that he is not in love with her—and why not? She is a pretty girl, a bright girl, he says, and of good people—”
“He knows nothing about her people,” interrupted Overton.
“But you do?”
“I know all it has been necessary for me to know,” and, in spite of himself, he could not speak of ’Tana to this man without a feeling of anger at his persistence. “But I can’t help being rather surprised, Mr. Haydon, that you should so quickly agree that a wise thing for 209 your partner’s nephew to do is to turn from all the cultured, intelligent girls he must know, and look for a wife among the mining camps of the Kootenai hills. And, considering the fact that you approve of it, without ever having heard her speak, without knowing in the least who or what her family have been—I must say it is an extraordinarily impulsive thing for a man of your reputation to do—a cool-headed, conservative business man.”
Mr. Haydon found himself scrutinized very closely, very coldly by the ranger, who had all the evening kept away from him, and whom he had mentally jotted down as a big, careless, improvident prospector, untaught and a bit uncouth.