“‘I am half sick of shadows,’” he murmured to himself, and he sat up and, resting against the tree, thought deeply. Another line came to him:
“On burnished hooves his war-horse trode.”
He suddenly sprang to his feet and walked straight to his office, his face resolute and his step determined. He was not a girl to be caught in a mesh! He would be the other. Jacquelin was at his desk, deep in a big law-book. Steve shut the door behind him and stood with his back against it looking down at his partner.
“Jacquelin, I am going to marry Ruth Welch.”
“What!” Jacquelin looked up in blank amazement. “Oh!” he laughed. “I thought you meant you had asked her.”
“You misunderstand me. It is not conceit. It is determination. I have no idea she will accept me now; but she will in the end. She shall, I will win her.” He was grave, and though his words spoke conceit, his voice and face had not a trace of it. Jacquelin too became grave.
“I believe you can win her if you try, Steve—unless someone else is in the way; but it is a long chase, I warn you.” Steve’s brow clouded for a second, but the shadow disappeared as quickly as it came.
“You don’t think there’s anything in that story about Wash Still?” His tone had a certain fiery contempt in it. “I tell you there isn’t. I’ll stake my salvation on that. An eagle does not mate with a weasel!”
“No—I do not believe she would, but how about her mother? You know what she thinks of us, and what they say of her missionary ideas, and Wash Still has been playing assiduously on that string of late. He is visiting all her sick, free—he says. Besides they have not the same ideas that we have about family and so on, and they don’t know the Stills as we do.”
“Not pride of family! You don’t know her. She’s one of the proudest people in the United States, of her family. I tell you she could give General Legaie six in the game and beat him. By Jove! I wish one could do the old-fashioned way. I’d just ride up and storm the stronghold and carry her off!” burst out Steve, straightening up and stretching out his arms, half in jest, half in earnest, his eyes flashing and his color rising at the thought.