The hiatus offered sufficient time for Miss Langdon entirely to recover her equanimity, and when at last Richard Morton's glance again sought her, he met the same cold, calm, unflinching gaze from her beautiful eyes that he had discovered there less than two weeks before, and, since, had never been able to forget for a single moment.
"Miss Langdon," he said, with his characteristic smile, "if you had been raised out west, in the country where I come from, you sure would have been bad medicine for anybody who tried your temper a little bit too far."
"What do you mean by that?" she asked him, quickly, but without offense. She was smiling now, and Morton's colloquialisms always interested her.
"Well, I mean a lot—and then some. If you'd been raised with a gun on your hip, and had been born a man instead of a woman, I reckon you'd have been an unsafe proposition to r'il. You certainly did look mad when you came out of that office-building; and the only regret I feel about it, is that I didn't stand within comfortable easy reach of the gazabo that made you feel like that. One of us would—have gone out through the window."
"It was my father," she said, simply, but smilingly.
"Oh! was it? Well, even so, I'm afraid I wouldn't be much of a respecter of persons, if you happened to be on the other side of the scales. I reckon your dad wouldn't look bigger than any other man. Have you forgotten what I said to you the second time I ever saw you?"
"No," she replied, gently, "I haven't forgotten it, and I never will forget it; but I must remind you of your promise to me, at that same meeting."
"Won't you call it off for just five minutes, Miss Langdon?" he asked in a low tone which had begun to vibrate with emotion. "Just call it off for one minute, if you won't let it go for five. It sure is hard to sit here, alongside of you, and not only to keep my hands and eyes away from you, but to keep my tongue cinched with a diamond hitch. I suppose I am hasty, and a mighty sight too previous for your customs here in the East, but I can't see why you won't take up with a chap like me; and, besides—"
"Mr. Morton!" She turned to him unsmilingly, her eyes cold and serious, and she spoke in a tone so low that even the sound of it could not extend to the young ladies who occupied the rear seats in the tonneau. "It is my duty to tell you that I have just become a willing party—a willing party, please understand—to a business transaction, by the terms of which I am now the affianced wife of—" Patricia paused abruptly. Morton, still guiding the machine delicately in and out through the traffic of the street, turned a shade paler under his sun-burned skin, and Patricia could see that his hand gripped almost fiercely upon the steering-wheel. She realized that he had understood the important part of what she had said, and she did not complete the unfinished sentence. There was a considerable silence before either of them spoke again, and then Morton asked calmly, but in a voice that was so changed as to be scarcely recognizable:
"Of whom, Patricia?" He made use of her given name unconsciously, and if she noticed the slip, she did not heed it.