ibility."

"I don't understand," said Hetty.

Again the little twinkle showed in Larry's eyes. "Well," he said quietly,
"that you should have taken me when you had men of his kind to choose from
means a good deal. I wouldn't like you to find out that you had been
mistaken, Hetty."

XXXI

TORRANCE RIDES AWAY

It was late at night, and Miss Schuyler, sitting alone in Hetty's room,
found the time pass very heavily. She had raised her voice in warning when
the cow-boys mounted the night Grant had ridden away with Hetty, and had
seen the fugitives vanish into the darkness, but since then she had had no
news of them, for while Breckenridge had arrived at Cedar the next day, in
custody of two mounted men, nobody would tell him what had really
happened. Her first impulse had been to ask for an escort to the depot and
take the cars for New York, but she was intensely anxious to discover
whether Hetty had evaded pursuit, and her pride forbade her slipping away
without announcing her intention to Torrance, who had not yet come back to
the Range. She felt that something was due to him, especially as she had
not regained the house unnoticed when the pursuit commenced.

Rising, she moved restlessly up and down the room; but that in no way
lessened the suspense, and sitting down again she resolutely took up a
book, but she listened instead of reading it. There was, however, no sound
from the prairie, and the house seemed exasperatingly still.

"You will have to shake this nervousness off or you will make a fool of
yourself before that man," she muttered.

She felt that she had sat there a very long while, though the clock showed
that scarcely an hour had passed, when at last there was a rattle of
wheels and a trampling of hoofs outside. The great door opened, and after
that there was an apparently interminable silence, until Hetty's maid came
in.

"If it is convenient, Mr. Torrance would like to speak to you," she said.

Flora Schuyler rose and followed the girl down the corridor; but her heart
beat faster than usual when the door of Torrance's room closed behind her.
The stove was no longer lighted, and Torrance stood beside the hearth,
which was littered with half-consumed papers, and Miss Schuyler, who knew
his precision in dress, noticed that he still wore the bespattered
garments he had ridden in. But it was the grimness of his face, and the
weariness in his pose, which seized her attention and aroused a curiou