"What, Karen?"
"I meant love," she said, dreamily.
CHAPTER XXI
SNIPERS
Dinner was ended. Darrel lay on a lounge in the sitting-room, a victim against his will to romance. Beside him on a low footstool sat Valentine, reading aloud to him when she thought he ought to be read to, fussing with his pillows when she chose to fuss, taking his cigarette from his lips and inserting a thermometer at intervals, and always calmly indifferent to his protests or to her mother's laughter.
For she had heard somewhere that a wild boar's teeth poisoned like a lion's mauling; and the sudden revelation of a hero under the shattered shell of modesty and self-depreciation which so long obscured the romantic qualities in this young man determined her to make him continue to play a rôle which every girl adores—the rôle of the stricken brave.
Never again could Darrel explain to her how timidity, caution, and a native and unfeigned stupidity invariably characterized his behaviour at psychological moments.
For Guild had told her all about this young man's cool resourcefulness and almost nerveless courage during those hair-raising days in Sonora when the great Yo Espero ranch was besieged, and every American prisoner taken was always reported "Shot in attempting to escape."