Bud laughed, but his eyes were full of a sympathy that had no meaning for the others.
"Not crazy, little Nan. Jest good grit. Guess Jeff didn't see the pool waitin' around for him to pick up. Wal, guess ther's a heap o' folk like him. You played right out for a win, an' you won—by a head."
CHAPTER XI
ELVINE VAN BLOOREN
It was the last day of the Cattle Week. A week which, for at least three people, was fraught with something in the nature of epoch-making events. All that the simple heart of Nan Tristram had looked forward to, yearned for, had been denied her from the first moment she had beheld that unmistakable lightening up of Jeff's eyes on his meeting with Elvine van Blooren. It had been a revelation of dread. Her own secret hopes had been set shaking to their very foundations. And from that moment on, during the rest of the week, brick by brick the whole edifice of them had been set tumbling. By the last day nothing but a pile of debris remained.
Holiday! It had been a good deal less than holiday. She had looked forward to one all too brief succession of days of delight. Jeff, who had been honored by his fellows in the world which was theirs. Jeff, the leader in the great industry which absorbed them all. Jeff, the man by his very temperament marked out for a worldly success only bounded by the limitations of his personal ambitions. She had been so proud of him. She had been so thankful to be allowed to share in his triumphs. She had shared in them, too—up till that meeting with Elvine van Blooren at the reception. After that—ah, well, there had been very little after for Nan.
And the man himself. Four days had sufficed to reduce Jeff's feelings to a condition of love-sickness such as is best associated with extreme youth. Furthermore its hold upon him was deeper, more lasting by reason of the innate strength of his character.
As for Elvine van Blooren it would be less easy to say. Her beauty was of a darkly reticent order. Hers was the face, the eyes, the manner yielding up few secrets. She rarely imparted confidence even to her mother. And a woman who denies her mother rarely yields confidence to any other human creature.
Perhaps in her case, however, she had good reason. Mrs. John D. Carruthers, who possessed a simple erudite professor for a husband, a man who possessed no worldly ambitions of any sort, and who readily accepted his pension from the trustees of St. Bude's College at the earliest date, so that he might devote all his riper years to the prosecution of his passion for classical research, was a painful example of worldliness, and a woman who regarded position and wealth before all things. There was little enough sympathy between mother and daughter. Mrs. John D. Carruthers only saw in Elvine's unusual beauty an asset in her schemes of advancement. While Elvine displayed a cold disregard for the older woman's efforts, and went her own way.
Elvine was strong, even as Jeffrey Masters was strong. But while the man's strength lay in the single purpose of achievement, Elvine looked for the ease and luxury which life could legitimately afford her. Elvine and her mother possessed far too much in common ever to have sympathy for one another.