“Mr. Charlton, I want to speak to you about Katy.”

It took Albert a moment or two to collect his thoughts.  When he first perceived Miss Marlay, she seemed part of the landscape.  There was about her form and motion an indefinable gracefulness that was like the charm of this hazy, undulant, moonlit prairie, and this blue sky seen through the lace of thin, milk-white clouds.  It was not until she spoke Katy’s name that he began to return to himself.  Katy was the one jarring string in the harmony of his hopes.

“About Katy?  Certainly, Miss Marlay.  Won’t you sit down?”

“No, I thank you.”

“Mr. Charlton, couldn’t you get Katy away while her relations with Westcott are broken?  You don’t know how soon she’ll slip back into her old love for him.”

“If—­” and Albert hesitated.  To go, he must leave Miss Minorkey.  And the practical difficulty presented itself to him at the same moment.  “If I could raise money enough to get away, I should go.  But Mr. Plausaby has all of my money and all of Katy’s.”

Isabel was on the point of complaining that Albert should lend to Mr. Plausaby, but she disliked to take any liberty, even that of reproof.  Ever since she knew that the family had thought of marrying her to Albert, she had been an iceberg to him.  He should not dare to think that she had any care for him.  For the same reason, another reply died unuttered on her lips.  She was about to offer to lend Mr. Charlton fifty dollars of her own.  But her quick pride kept her back, and, besides, fifty dollars was not half-enough.  She said she thought there must be some way of raising the money.  Then, as if afraid she had been too cordial and had laid her motives open to suspicion in speaking thus to Charlton, she drew herself up and bade him good-night with stiff politeness, leaving him half-fascinated by her presence, half-vexed with something in her manner, and wholly vexed with himself for having any feeling one way or the other.  What did he care for Isabel Marlay?  What if she were graceful and full of a subtle fascination of presence?  Why should he value such things?  What were they worth, after all?  What if she were kind one minute and repellent the next?  Isa Marlay was nothing to him!

Lying in his little unfinished chamber, he dismissed intellectual Miss Minorkey from his mind with regret; he dismissed graceful but practical Miss Marlay from his mind also, wondering that he had to dismiss her at all, and gave himself to devising ways and means of eloping with little Katy.  She must be gotten away.  It was evident that Plausaby would make no effort to raise money to help him and Katy to get away.  Plausaby would prefer to detain Katy.  Clearly, to proceed to pre-empt his claim, to persuade Plausaby to raise money enough for him to buy a land-warrant with, and then to raise two hundred dollars by mortgaging his land to Minorkey or any other lover of mortgages with waiver clauses in them, was the only course open.