“I?  No, no, no, no!  I’ve ridden once in a car that boy was driving.  Never again!  But it’s entirely proper for you and Barbara to go.  Yes, yes.  But I will not.  No, no, no, no!”

Nevada flew to the door, and said to the maid: 

“You bet we’ll go.  I’ll answer for Miss Barbara.  Tell the boy to say to Mr. Warren, ‘You bet we’ll go.’”

“Nevada,” called old Jerome, “pardon me, my dear, but wouldn’t it be as well to send him a note in reply?  Just a line would do.”

“No, I won’t bother about that,” said Nevada, gayly.  “Gilbert will understand—­he always does.  I never rode in an automobile in my life; but I’ve paddled a canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost Horse Canon, and if it’s any livelier than that I’d like to know!”

III

Two months are supposed to have elapsed.

Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand-dollar house.  It was a good place for her.  Many places are provided in the world where men and women may repair for the purpose of extricating themselves from divers difficulties.  There are cloisters, wailing-places, watering-places, confessionals, hermitages, lawyer’s offices, beauty parlors, air-ships, and studies; and the greatest of these are studies.

It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover that it is the longest side of a triangle.  But it’s a long line that has no turning.

Barbara was alone.  Uncle Jerome and Nevada had gone to the theatre.  Barbara had not cared to go.  She wanted to stay at home and study in the study.  If you, miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every day that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting hobbles and a lasso on the young man you wanted for yourself, you, too, would lose taste for the oxidized-silver setting of a musical comedy.

Barbara sat by the quartered-oak library table.  Her right arm rested upon the table, and her dextral fingers nervously manipulated a sealed letter.  The letter was addressed to Nevada Warren; and in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope was Gilbert’s little gold palette.  It had been delivered at nine o’clock, after Nevada had left.

Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know what the letter contained; but she could not open and read it by the aid of steam, or a pen-handle, or a hair-pin, or any of the generally approved methods, because her position in society forbade such an act.  She had tried to read some of the lines of the letter by holding the envelope up to a strong light and pressing it hard against the paper, but Gilbert had too good a taste in stationery to make that possible.

At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned.  It was a delicious winter night.  Even so far as from the cab to the door they were powdered thickly with the big flakes downpouring diagonally from the east.  Old Jerome growled good-naturedly about villainous cab service and blockaded streets.  Nevada, colored like a rose, with sapphire eyes, babbled of the stormy nights in the mountains around dad’s cabin.  During all these wintry apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart, sawed wood—­the only appropriate thing she could think of to do.