"A fox," snarled Sinclair, growing more and more excited, as this narrative continued. "That's the way with one of them kind. They play a game. Never out in the open. Waiting till they win, and then acting the devil. Go on!"
"Perhaps you're right. His visits became more and more frequent. Finally he asked me to marry him. That brought the truth of my position home to me, and I found all at once that, though I had rather liked him as a friend, I had to quake at the idea of him as a husband."
Sinclair snapped his cigarette into the coals of the fire and set his jaw. She liked him in his anger.
"But what could I do? All of the last part of Dad's life had been pointed toward this one thing. I felt that he would come out of his grave and haunt me. I asked for one more day to think it over. He told me to take a month or a year, as I pleased, and that made me ashamed. I told him on the spot that I would marry him, but that I didn't love him."
"I'll tell you what he answered—curse him!" exclaimed Sinclair.
"What?"
"Through the years that was comin', he'd teach you to love him."
"That was exactly what he said in those very words! How did you guess that?"
"I'll tell you I got a sort of a second sight for the ways of a snake, or an ornery hoss, or a sneak of a man. Go on!"
"I think you have. At any rate, after I had told him I'd marry him, he pressed me to set the date as early as possible, and I agreed. There was only a ten-day interval.