“I reckon you’re right,” he said, looking down.

“Oh! we’re not accusing you of fickleness,” said Christie gayly; “although you didn’t come, and we were obliged to ask Mr. Hall to join us.  I suppose you found him and Jessie just now?”

But George made no reply.  The color was slowly coming back to his face, which, as she glanced covertly at him, seemed to have grown so much older that his returning blood might have brought two or three years with it.

“Really, Mr. Kearney,” she said dryly, “one would think that some silly, conceited girl”—­she was quite earnest in her epithets, for a sudden, angry conviction of some coquetry and disingenuousness in Jessie had come to her in contemplating its effects upon the young fellow at her side—­“some country jilt, had been trying her rustic hand upon you.”

“She is not silly, conceited, nor countrified,” said George, slowly raising his beautiful eyes to the young girl half reproachfully.  “It is I who am all that.  No, she is right, and you know it.”

Much as Christie admired and valued her sister’s charms, she thought this was really going too far.  What had Jessie ever done—­what was Jessie—­to provoke and remain insensible to such a blind devotion as this?  And really, looking at him now, he was not so very young for Jessie; whether his unfortunate passion had brought out all his latent manliness, or whether he had hitherto kept his serious nature in the background, certainly he was not a boy.  And certainly his was not a passion that he could be laughed out of.  It was getting very tiresome.  She wished she had not met him—­at least until she had had some clearer understanding with her sister.  He was still walking beside her, with his hand on her bridle rein, partly to lead her horse over some boulders in the trail, and partly to conceal his first embarrassment.  When they had fairly reached the woods, he stopped.

“I am going to say good-by, Miss Carr.”

“Are you not coming further?  We must be near Indian Spring, now; Mr. Hall and—­and Jessie—­cannot be far away.  You will keep me company until we meet them?”

“No,” he replied quietly.  “I only stopped you to say good-by.  I am going away.”

“Not from Devil’s Ford?” she asked, in half-incredulous astonishment.  “At least, not for long?”

“I am not coming back,” he replied.

“But this is very abrupt,” she said hurriedly, feeling that in some ridiculous way she had precipitated an equally ridiculous catastrophe.  “Surely you are not going away in this fashion, without saying good-by to Jessie and—­and father?”

“I shall see your father, of course—­and you will give my regards to Miss Jessie.”

He evidently was in earnest.  Was there ever anything so perfectly preposterous?  She became indignant.

“Of course,” she said coldly, “I won’t detain you; your business must be urgent, and I forgot—­at least I had forgotten until to-day—­that you have other duties more important than that of squire of dames.  I am afraid this forgetfulness made me think you would not part from us in quite such a business fashion.  I presume, if you had not met me just now, we should none of us have seen you again?”