“And sometimes you get it. But you’ll allow it’s difficult. That’s all I meant. I’ve known her—let me see—for twelve years, at least; ever since I first went West. She was about eleven then, and her father was bringing her up on the ranch. Her aunt came along by and by and took her to Europe—mother dead before Hazelwood went out there. But the girl was always homesick for the ranch; she pined for it; and after they had kept her in Germany three or four years they let her come back and run wild again—wild as a flower does, or a vine, not a domesticated animal.”
“Go slow, Halson. This is getting too much for the romantic Rulledge.”
“Rulledge can bear up against the facts, I guess, Minver,” Halson said, almost austerely. “Her father died two years ago, and then she had to come East, for her aunt simply wouldn’t live on the ranch. She brought her on here, and brought her out; I was at the coming-out tea; but the girl didn’t take to the New York thing at all; I could see it from the start; she wanted to get away from it with me, and talk about the ranch.”
“She felt that she was with the only genuine person among those conventional people.”
Halson laughed at Minver’s thrust, and went on amiably: “I don’t suppose that till she met Braybridge she was ever quite at her ease with any man—or woman, for that matter. I imagine, as you’ve done, that it was his fear of her that gave her courage. She met him on equal terms. Isn’t that it?”
Wanhope assented to the question referred to him with a nod.
“And when they got lost from the rest of the party at that picnic—”
“Lost?” Rulledge demanded.
“Why, yes. Didn’t you know? But I ought to go back. They said there never was anything prettier than the way she unconsciously went for Braybridge the whole day. She wanted him, and she was a child who wanted things frankly when she did want them. Then his being ten or fifteen years older than she was, and so large and simple, made it natural for a shy girl like her to assort herself with him when all the rest were assorting themselves, as people do at such things. The consensus of testimony is that she did it with the most transparent unconsciousness, and—”
“Who are your authorities?” Minver asked; Rulledge threw himself back on the divan and beat the cushions with impatience.