Nell cried till she brought on a slight headache, then made that an excuse for going to bed before the return of her brother and his wife. She did not want to face the keen scrutiny of Clare, who would be sure to detect the traces of tears and to make a shrewd guess at their cause.
The girl had ample space for repentance, overpowering anxiety and dread in the next two or three weeks; and though she continued to hide her feelings from those about her, seeming quite as light hearted and gay as was her wont, the darkness of night was witness to many sighs and tears.
Dale came in on the evening after her late interview with Kenneth, and seizing an opportunity for a few words in private, asked her what she thought of Dr. Clendenin's starting off upon such a journey at that inclement season of the year.
"Why should I trouble myself about it?" Nell asked, with a slight toss of her pretty head. "I presume the doctor knows his own business."
"Possibly," returned Dale, with gravity, "but can you conjecture what that business is?"
"Can you?" she asked. "Perhaps some Indian chief is ill, or has a sick wife or child, and wishes to test the skill of the medicine man of the whites."
"Your ingenuity does you credit, Miss Lamar," remarked Dale, poking the fire, "but I am satisfied that Clendenin has gone on the same errand that took him before; and that is a chase after a white woman living among the Indians."
"A relative?" queried Nell, with interest.
"No; he told me he had never had relative or friend taken by them; and that is what makes his evident anxiety to find her so puzzling, so utterly inexplicable to me."
"Neither relative nor friend," pondered Nell, as she lay awake that night, listening to the sough of the wind around the house, the creaking of the trees in its fierce blast, the rattle of sleet against the outer wall, and the distant howl of the prairie wolf, and thinking of Kenneth without shelter from storm or wild beast, "if it were his lady love he would never say that."