Then it was as if a little whirlwind of flying feet and entreating hands and beseeching eyes blew in upon Madeline.  Christine was small, graceful, plump, with very white skin and very dark hair.  She had been Madeline’s favorite maid for years and there was sincere affection between the two.  Whatever had been the blissful ignorance of Ambrose, it was manifestly certain that Christine knew how she had transgressed.  Her fear and remorse and appeal for forgiveness were poured out in an incoherent storm.  Plain it was that the little French maid had been overwhelmed.  It was only after Madeline had taken the emotional girl in her arms and had forgiven and soothed her that her part in the elopement became clear.  Christine was in a maze.  But gradually, as she talked and saw that she was forgiven, calmness came in some degree, and with it a story which amused yet shocked Madeline.  The unmistakable, shy, marveling love, scarcely realized by Christine, gave Madeline relief and joy.  If Christine loved Ambrose there was no harm done.  Watching the girl’s eyes, wonderful with their changes of thought, listening to her attempts to explain what it was evident she did not understand, Madeline gathered that if ever a caveman had taken unto himself a wife, if ever a barbarian had carried off a Sabine woman, then Ambrose Mills had acted with the violence of such ancient forebears.  Just how it all happened seemed to be beyond Christine.

“He say he love me,” repeated the girl, in a kind of rapt awe.  “He ask me to marry him—­he kees me—­he hug me—­he lift me on ze horse—­he ride with me all night—­he marry me.”

And she exhibited a ring on the third finger of her left hand.  Madeline saw that, whatever had been the state of Christine’s feeling for Ambrose before this marriage, she loved him now.  She had been taken forcibly, but she was won.

After Christine had gone, comforted and betraying her shy eagerness to get back to Ambrose, Madeline was haunted by the look in the girl’s eyes, and her words.  Assuredly the spell of romance was on this sunny land.  For Madeline there was a nameless charm, a nameless thrill combating her sense of the violence and unfitness of Ambrose’s wooing.  Something, she knew not what, took arms against her intellectual arraignment of the cowboy’s method of getting himself a wife.  He had said straight out that he loved the girl—­he had asked her to marry him—­he kissed her—­he hugged her—­he lifted her upon his horse—­he rode away with her through the night—­and he married her.  In whatever light Madeline reviewed this thing she always came back to her first natural impression; it thrilled her, charmed her.  It went against all the precepts of her training; nevertheless, it was somehow splendid and beautiful.  She imagined it stripped another artificial scale from her over-sophisticated eyes.

Scarcely had she settled again to the task on her desk when Stillwell’s heavy tread across the porch interrupted her.  This time when he entered he wore a look that bordered upon the hysterical; it was difficult to tell whether he was trying to suppress grief or glee.