As soon as they reached home Beatrice led the way into the library.  Bromfield was sitting there with her father.  They were talking over plans for the annual election of officers of the Bird Cage Mining Company.  Whitford was the largest stockholder and Bromfield owned the next biggest block.  They controlled it between them.

“Dad, Rob Roy bolted and Mr. Lindsay stopped him before I was thrown.”

Whitford rose, the color ebbing from his cheeks.  “I’ve always told you that brute was dangerous.  I’ll offer him for sale to-day.”

“And I’ve discovered that we know the man who saved me from the wild steer in Arizona.  It was Mr. Lindsay.”

“Lindsay!” Whitford turned to him.  “Is that right?”

“It’s correct.”

Colin Whitford, much moved, put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder.  “Son, you know what I’d like to tell you.  I reckon I can’t say it right.”

“We’ll consider it said, Mr. Whitford,” answered Clay with his quick, boyish smile.  “No use in spillin’ a lot of dictionary words.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“It was nothin’ to brag about.”

Bromfield came to time with a thin word of thanks.  “We’re all greatly in your debt, Mr. Lindsay.”

As the days passed the malicious jealousy of the New York clubman deepened to a steady hatred.  A fellow of ill-controlled temper, his thin-skinned vanity writhed at the condition which confronted him.  He was engaged to a girl who preferred another and a better man, one against whom he had an unalterable grudge.  He recognized in the Westerner an eager energy, a clean-cut resilience, and an abounding vitality he would have given a great deal to possess.  His own early manhood had been frittered away in futile dissipations and he resented bitterly the contrast between himself and Lindsay that must continually be present in the mind of the girl who had promised to marry him.  He had many adventitious things to offer her—­such advantages as modern civilization has made desirable to hothouse women—­but he could not give the clean, splendid youth she craved.  It was the price he had paid for many sybaritic pleasures he had been too soft to deny himself.

With only a little more than two weeks of freedom before her, Beatrice made the most of her days.  For the first time in her life she became a creature of moods.  The dominant ones were rebellion, recklessness, and repentance.  While Bromfield waited and fumed she rode and tramped with Clay.  It was not fair to her affianced lover.  She knew that.  But there were times when she wanted to shriek as dressmakers and costumers fussed over her and wore out her jangled nerves with multitudinous details.  The same hysteria welled up in her occasionally at the luncheons and dinners that were being given in honor of her approaching marriage.

It was not logical, of course.  She was moving toward the destiny she had chosen for herself.  But there was an instinct in her, savage and primitive, to hurt Bromfield because she herself was suffering.  In the privacy of her room she passed hours of tearful regret for these bursts of fierce insurrection.