"Superstition," Flora replied, and she laughed contemptuously. "They have had hard hunting and game has been scarce. They think I'll change their luck. And, more than that, Running Wolf hopes I may some time marry him——"
"Marry him!" echoed the chief trader. "Are you crazy? Or is he?"
"He is," Macleod's daughter responded with harsh merriment. "He wants to get the Factor's permission." Her voice was bitterly contemptuous.
Dunvegan frowned blackly. "If he mentions that to Macleod he will raise a storm with speech for thunder and blows for lightning. You are Black Ferguson's wife. That fact cannot be got over."
"He got over it," snapped Flora.
"And why?" demanded the chief trader. "There must have been a reason. Surely his wooing and marrying was more than a simple whim to thwart Macleod. Surely there was a reason, and a good one, for this swift divorce!"
"There was," admitted Flora grimly, Her eyes burned up into Dunvegan's with fierce irony. "A good reason. He set eyes on your own ideal."
"My own ideal!" exclaimed Dunvegan, making a poor pretence of ignorance. "I hardly catch your meaning."
"No?" Flora sneered. "Paddling down Lake Lemeau, as we hunted, who did we encounter but Desirée Lazard, with her Uncle Pierre and his men. Desirée Lazard, you understand! The ripest beauty of Oxford House, the breaker of Hudson's Bay hearts, and the very idol of one Dunvegan." Flora's harsh, grating chuckle, seeming to come more from the dark, unfathomable eyes than from the thin-lipped mouth, held the essence of taunt.
At the pointedness of her speech Bruce Dunvegan's tanned skin took on a deeper flame of red even than that caused by her charge of cowardice. He could not well retort, but as his fingers involuntarily clenched he wished a man had done the baiting.