So they waited for Mark King to come again out of the forest.  All the next day Gloria, dressed very daintily and looking so lovely in her expectancy that even old Jim Spalding’s eyes followed her everywhere, watched from the porch or a window or her place by the creek.  She was sure that he would step out of the shadows into the sun with that familiar appearance of having just materialized from among the tree trunks; over and over she was prepared, with prettily simulated surprise, to greet his coming.  But the day passed, night drove them indoors to a cosy fireplace and lights and fragments of music which Gloria played wistfully or crashingly in bursts of impatience, and still he did not come.  Mrs. Gaynor went off to bed at nine o’clock; Gloria, suddenly absorbed in a book, elected to sit up and finish her chapter.  She outwatched the log fire; at eleven o’clock the air was chill, and Gloria as she went upstairs shivered a little and felt tired and vaguely sad.

The next day she put on another pretty dress, did her hair in her favourite way, and went about the house as gay as a lark.  The day dragged by; King did not come.  By nightfall the look in Gloria’s eyes had altered, and a stubborn expression played havoc with the tenderer curves of her mouth.  She resented at this late date King’s way of going; not only had he not told her good-bye, he had left no word with her father for her.  She sat smiling over a letter received some days ago from Gratton—­after she had retrieved the letter from a heap of crumpled papers in her bedroom waste-paper basket.  She read to her mother fragments, bright, gossipy remarks in Gratton’s clever way of saying them; she wrote a long, dashingly composed answer.

Two days later she said to her mother, out of a long silence over the coffee cups: 

“Let’s go back to San Francisco.  This stupid place gets on my nerves.”

“Why, of course, dear,” agreed Mrs. Gaynor.  “I can have everything packed this afternoon, and to-morrow——­”

“Nonsense,” said Gloria.  “You know we can get packed in half an hour.”

That day they left Jim Spalding in charge and departed for Truckee to catch a train for San Francisco.  Mrs. Gaynor dutifully entrusted to Spalding her husband’s message for Mark King.  That is to say, that portion of the message which she considered important.  Gloria herself left no message with old Jim; not in so many words.  But she did impress him with her abundant gaiety, with her eagerness for San Francisco, where all of her best and dearest friends were.  If any one should ask old Jim concerning Miss Gloria, Jim would be sure to make it clear that she had no minutest regret in going but a very lively anticipation of the fullest happiness elsewhere.

Chapter IX

Three or four weeks passed before Mark King and Gloria met again.  Weeks of busy gaiety on her part, of steady, persistent seeking on his.  Now again Gloria and her mother and Ben were at the log house in the mountains, this time with a fresh set of guests.  Only one of the former flock had been invited:  Mr. Gratton.  And this despite Ben Gaynor’s uneasy “This chap Gratton, Nellie.  He’s cutting in pretty strong here of late, and I don’t know that I like him.  He’s too confounded smooth somehow.”