"I expect I deserved that. I wanted to make you safe. It"s the most pressing difficulty."
The bitterness was still in the girl"s eyes.
"So far as I am concerned, you seem to believe it is the only one."
Then her anger seemed to carry her away. "Oh," she said, "do you imagine that an offer of the kind you have made me, made as you have made it, would lead anyone to love you?"
Wyllard smiled. "When I first saw your picture, and when I saw you afterwards, I loved your gracious quietness. Now you seem to have got rid of it, I love you better as you are. There is, however, one thing I must ask again, and it"s your clear duty to tell me. Are you fonder of Gregory than you feel you ever could be of me?"
Agatha"s eyes fell. She felt she could not look at him just then, nor could she answer his question honestly as she almost wished to.
"At least, I am bound to him until he releases me."
"Ah," said Wyllard, "that is what I was most afraid of. All along it hampered me, and in it you have the reason for my bloodlessness. It is another reason why I should go away."
"For fear that you should tempt me from my duty?"
The man"s expression changed, and there crept into his eyes a gleam of the pa.s.sion that she knew he was capable of.
"My dear," he said, "I seem to know that I could make you break faith with that man. You belong to me. For three years you have been everywhere with me, but we will let that go. I must go away, and Gregory will have a clear field, but the probability is in favour of me coming back again, and then, if he has failed to make the most of it, I"ll enforce my claim."
He turned and seized one of her hands, holding it strongly against her will.
"That is my last word. At least, you will let me think that when I go up yonder into the mists and snow I shall take your good wishes for my success away with me."
She lifted her face, which was flushed, and once more looked him steadily in the eyes.
"They are yours, most fervently," she said. "It would be intolerable that you should fail."
He smiled very gravely, and let her hand fall. "After all," he said, "one can only do what one can."
Then he went out without another glance at her, and not long afterwards Mrs. Hastings, who was endued with a reasonable measure of curiosity, found occasion to enter the room.
"You have said something to trouble Harry?" she began.
Agatha contrived to smile. "I"m not sure he"s greatly troubled. In any case, I told him I would not marry him--for the second time."
"He has given up his crazy notion, thee?"
"He never suggested doing that."
Mrs. Hastings made a little sign of compa.s.sionate astonishment.
"Oh," she said, "he"s mad."
"I believe I told him he was bloodless. At least, that was how he interpreted what I said."
Mrs. Hastings laughed. "Harry Wyllard bloodless! My dear, can"t you see that the restraint he now and then practises is the sign of a tremendous vitality? Still, the man"s mad. Did he tell you that he means to leave Gregory in charge of Willow Range?"
Agatha was certainly astonished at this, but Mrs. Hastings nodded.
"It"s a fact," she said. "He asked him to meet him here to save time, and"--she turned towards the window--"there"s his waggon now."
She moved towards the door, and then turned again. "Is there any blood--red blood we will call it--or even common-sense in you? You could have kept that man here if you had wanted."
"No," said Agatha, "I don"t think I could. I"m not even sure that if I"d had the right I would have done it. He recognised that."
Mrs. Hastings looked at her very curiously. "Then," she said, "you have either a somewhat extraordinary character, or are in love with him in a way that is beyond most of us. In any case, I can"t help feeling that you will be sorry for what you have done some day."
Next moment the door closed with a bang, and Agatha was left alone endeavouring to a.n.a.lyse her sensations during her interview with Wyllard, which was difficult, for they had been confused and fragmentary. She had certainly been angry with him, but the cause for this was much less apparent, though there were one or two half-sufficient explanations. For one thing, it was almost intolerable to feel that he had evidently taken it for granted that the greater security she would enjoy as his wife would appeal to her, though there was a certain satisfaction in the reflection that to leave her dependent upon Mrs. Hastings caused him concern. For another thing, his reserve had been at least perplexing, and it was borne in upon her that it would have cost her a more determined effort to withstand him had he spoken with fire and pa.s.sion. The restraint, however, had been evident, and he could not have practised it unless there had been something to hold in check; and then it became apparent that it was more important to ascertain his motives than her own.
If the man had been fervently in love with her, why had he not insisted on that fact, she asked. Could it have been because he had with the fantastic generosity, which he was evidently capable of, been willing to leave his comrade unhandicapped with an open field? That, however, seemed too much to expect from any man. Then there was the other explanation that he preferred to leave the choice wholly to her lest he should tempt her too strongly to break faith with Gregory, which brought the blood to her face as it had done already, since it suggested that he fancied he had only to urge her sufficiently and she would yield. There was, it seemed, no satisfactory explanation at all.
Only the fact remained that he had made her a somewhat dispa.s.sionate offer of marriage, and had left her to decide, which she had done.
As it happened, Wyllard could not just then, at least, have made the matter very much clearer. Shrewdly practical, as he was, in some respects, there were times when he acted blindly, merely doing without reasoning what he sub-consciously felt was right. This had more than once involved him in disaster, but it is, perhaps, fortunate that there are others like him, for, after all, in the long run the failures of such men now and then prove better than the dictates of calculating wisdom.
In any case, Agatha found a momentary relief from her thoughts as she watched Hawtrey get down from his waggon and approach the house. The change in him was plainer than it had ever been, which may have been because she had now a standard of comparison. He was tall and well-favoured, and he moved with a jaunty and yet not ungraceful swing; but it almost seemed to her that this was merely the result of an empty self-sufficiency. There was, she felt, no force behind it which when the strain came would prove that jaunty bearing warranted. He was smiling, and for some reason his smile appeared a trifle inane, while there was certainly a hint of sensuousness in his face. It suggested that the man might sink into self-indulgent coa.r.s.eness. She, however, remembered that she was still pledged to him, and determinedly brushed these thoughts aside, until she heard his footsteps inside the house, when she became possessed of a burning curiosity as to what Wyllard had to say to him, which, however, remained unsatisfied.
In the meanwhile, Hawtrey entered a room where Wyllard sat awaiting him with a paper in his hand.
"I asked you to drive over here because it would save time," he said.
"I have to go in to the railroad at once. Here"s a draft of the scheme I suggested. You had better tell me if there"s anything you"re not quite satisfied with."
He threw the paper on the table, and Hawtrey, who took it up, perused it.
"I"m to farm and generally manage the Range on your behalf," he said.
"My percentage to be deducted after harvest. I"m empowered to sell out grain or horses as appears advisable, and to have the use of teams and implements for my own place when occasion requires it."
He looked up. "I"ve no fault to find with the thing, Harry. It"s generous."
"Then you had better sign it, and we"ll get Hastings to witness it in a minute or two. In the meanwhile there"s a thing I have to ask you.
How do you stand in regard to Miss Ismay?"
Hawtrey pushed his chair back noisily. "That," he said, "is a subject on which I"m naturally not disposed to give you any information. How does it concern you?
"In this way. Believing that your engagement must be broken off I asked Miss Ismay to marry me."
Hawtrey was clearly startled, but in a moment or two he smiled.
"Of course," he said, "she wouldn"t. As a matter of fact, our engagement isn"t broken off. It"s merely extended."
They looked at each other in silence for a moment or two, and there was a curious hardness in Wyllard"s eyes. Then Hawtrey spoke again.
"In view of what you have just told me why did you want to put me of all people in charge of the Range?" he said.
"I"ll be candid," said Wyllard. "For one thing, you held on when I was slipping off the trestle that day in British Columbia. For another, you"ll make nothing of your own holding, and if you run the Range as it ought to be run it will put a good many dollars into your pocket, besides relieving me of a big anxiety. If you"re to marry Miss Ismay, I"d sooner she was made reasonably comfortable."
Hawtrey looked up with a flush in his face.
"Harry," he said, "this is extravagantly generous."