"I won't tolerate it. I just won't, Momma," she cried, with an energy which brought the other's eyes swiftly to her face. "You've talked of four years wasted, but you don't say a word of the other year, the fifth. It's taken me all that time to—forget what your judgment might have saved me from. Oh, yes. You know it just as well as I do. Don't blind yourself. I was foolish then, I thought I was in love, and it was the moment when the advice of a woman worth having might have helped me. You urged me in my folly to marry then, the same as you're urging me now. You saw everything you hoped for in that marriage, and you let me plunge myself into a living hell without a single qualm. The result. Oh, I've tried to forget. But I can't I haven't forgotten. I never shall forget. But I've learned. I certainly have. I've learned to think wholly for myself—of myself. I don't need advice now. I don't need a thing. You'll never see things my way, and I don't fancy to see them yours. I shall marry. And when I marry again I promise you I'll marry right, and," she laughed bitterly, "I guess I'll hand you the rake off which you're looking for. But," she went on, with a swift, ruthless candor which stung even the worldly heart of the older woman, "I'll make no experimental practice. I'll marry the man I want to, first because I like him, and second, because he's a right man, and can hand me the life I need. Maybe that's pretty hard sounding, but I tell you, Momma, it's nothing to the hardness that makes you talk the way you do. Anyway, I want you to get it fixed in your mind right now I'm no priceless gem in a jewelry store that you're going to sell at the price you figure. I'll dispose of myself when, and to whom, I choose, and my motives will be my own. Now we'll quit it, once for all. Jeffrey Masters is coming right along down the sidewalk."
The mother's black eyes snapped angrily.
"Very well," she exclaimed sharply. "See to it you make good. Your father's pension isn't even sufficient for two, and your own money is limited. Meanwhile, don't forget the Tristram girl's just as pretty as a picture."
But Elvine's exasperation had passed. There was a slight softening in her eyes as they surveyed the handsome, elaborately dressed gray head and the careful toilet of her unlovely mother. She understood the bitter carping of this disappointed woman. Her spirit soared far beyond the lot of the wife of a pensioned school-teacher. She knew, too, that somewhere, lost in some dim recess of a coldly calculating nature, there was a tiny, glowing spot which burned wholly for her.
There was an unusual softness in her tone when she replied.
"But she needs framing, Momma," she said lightly. "And anyway, a girl who lives more or less on the premises with a man for five years or so, and hasn't married him—well, I guess she never will."
* * * * * *
The whole method of Jeff's life was rapidity of thought and swift execution supported by a perfect genius for clear thinking. It was these characteristics which had lifted him so rapidly in the world of cattle he had made his own. It was these which had shown him the possibilities of the now great Obar Ranch.
It might have been claimed for him that he lacked many of the lovable weaknesses of human nature. It might have been said that he was hard, cold. Yet such was his passionate ambition beneath a cool, deliberate exterior that it would have been foolish to believe that his outward display was the real man. He was perhaps a powerfully controlled fire, but the hot tide ran strong within him, and the right torch at the right moment might easily stir the depths of him and bring their fiery display to the surface.
Bud knew him. Bud understood something of the deep human tide flowing through his strong veins. Once he had seen that tide at the surface, and it had left an impression not easily forgettable. Nan, too, was not without understanding of him. But hers was the understanding of her sex for an idol she had set up in her heart. Her knowledge of his shortcomings and his best characteristics was perhaps the reflection of her feelings for him, feelings which make it possible for a woman to endow any object of her profound regard with the virtues she would have it possess. To her there was nothing of the iron, relentless, purposeful soul about him. He was just "Honest Jeff," as she loved to call him. A creature full of kindly thought for others as well as strong in his own personal attitude toward life.