He went out into another car, and she tried to divert her mind by looking at the few passengers.
Two men in the seat just in front of her engaged her attention by their animated discussion of the oil business. They seemed to be business men, both rich and prosperous, but strangers met for the first time. One was in reality a West Virginia oil king, bragging of his luck, and giving points to the other, a New Yorker, come out, he said, to see about some investments he had made in the State years ago, and almost forgotten until the present oil boom had recalled them to his mind.
“It is almost nineteen years since I was in West Virginia before,” he said. “Then I was on a hunting trip, and just for speculation I took several leases on oil lands, and afterward I lent an old farmer money and took a mortgage on his rocky farm. It has never been paid, and I wonder if he has forgotten it, as I almost did, till lately?”
“Whereabouts is it situated?”
“In Harrison county, not many miles from Clarksburg.”
“Like as not the old farmer has struck oil and got rich. It’s in one of the richest oil fields. Do you remember his name?”
After a moment’s hesitancy the New Yorker answered that it had slipped his memory. He would have to apply to the county court where the mortgage was recorded.
Then he seemed to relapse into thoughtfulness, and Eva mechanically studied his face.
It was blond and handsome, with whitening hair and mustache, and deep lines of care that told a story of sadness her unskilled eyes could not read. He must be approaching fifty, and was tall and well-dressed, with a decidedly aristocratic air.
Suddenly the conductor returned, taking up the tickets, and Eva looked out of the window with reddening cheeks and a fearful thumping of the heart, at the flying landscape.