His face caught fire at her apparent misunderstanding.

“I don’t read yours,” he said.

“Game?  Bless you, I’ve no game to play.  I’m giving Sheila her chance.  But I’m not going to give her a chance at the cost of your happiness.  You’re too good a lad for that.  I thought you were going to ask her to be your wife.  And I wasn’t going to allow you to do it—­blind.  I was going to advise you to come back three years from now and see her again.  Maybe this fine clean air and this life and this honest work and the training she gets from me will make her straight.  My God!  Cosme Hilliard, have you set eyes on Hudson?  What kind of girl travels West from New York at Sylvester Hudson’s expense and in his company and queens it in the suite at his hotel?”

“Miss Blake,” he muttered, “do you know this?”

The cigarette had burnt itself out.  Cosme’s face was no longer cruel.  It was dazed.

She laughed shortly.  “Why, of course, I know Sheila.  I know her whole history—­and it’s some history!  She’s twice the age she looks.  Do you think I’d have her here with me this way without knowing the girl?  I tell you, I want to give her a chance.  I don’t care if you try to test her out.  I’d like to see if two months has done anything for her.  She was real set on being a good girl when she quit Hudson.  I don’t know, but I’m willing to bet that she’ll turn you down.”

From far away up the mountain-side came the fierce baying of the dog pack.  Cosme pulled himself together and stood up.  His face had an ignorant, baffled look, the look of an unskilled and simple mind caught in a web.

“I reckon she—­she isn’t coming down,” he said slowly, without lifting his eyes from the floor.  “I reckon I’ll be going.  I won’t wait.”

He walked to the door, his steps falling without spring, and went out and so across the porch and the clearing to his horse.

At the sound of the closing door there came a flurry of movement in the loft.  The trap was raised.  Sheila came quickly down the ladder.  She was dressed in a pair of riding-breeches and her hair was cropped like Miss Blake’s just below the ears.  The quaintest rose-leaf of a Rosalind she looked, just a wisp of grace, utterly unlike a boy.  All the soft, slim litheness with its quick turns revealed—­a little figure of unconscious sweet enchantment.  But the face was flushed and tear-stained, the eyes distressed.  She stood, hands on her belt, at the foot of the ladder.

“Why has he gone?  Why didn’t he wait?”

Miss Blake turned a frank, indulgent face.  But it was deeply flushed.  “Oh, shucks!” she said, “I suppose he got tired.  Why didn’t you come down?”

Sheila sent a look down her slim legs.  “Oh, because I am a fool.  Miss Blake—­did you really burn my two frocks—­both of them?” Her eyes coaxed and filled.

“It’s all they’re fit for, my dear.  You can make yourself new ones.  You know it’s more sensible and comfortable, too, to work and ride in breeches.  I know what I’m doing, child.—­I’ve lived this way quite a number of years.  You look real nice.  I can’t abide female floppery, anyhow.  What’s it a sign of?  Rotten slavery.”  She set her very even teeth together hard as she said this.