“After the funeral it was the same way.  He came to see me only now and then.  He was courteous and attentive, and he seemed to be fond of me.”

“A fox,” snarled Sinclair, growing more and more excited, as this narrative continued.  “That’s the way with one of them kind.  They play a game.  Never out in the open.  Waiting till they win, and then acting the devil.  Go on!”

“Perhaps you’re right.  His visits became more and more frequent.  Finally he asked me to marry him.  That brought the truth of my position home to me, and I found all at once that, though I had rather liked him as a friend, I had to quake at the idea of him as a husband.”

Sinclair snapped his cigarette into the coals of the fire and set his jaw.  She liked him in his anger.

“But what could I do?  All of the last part of Dad’s life had been pointed toward this one thing.  I felt that he would come out of his grave and haunt me.  I asked for one more day to think it over.  He told me to take a month or a year, as I pleased, and that made me ashamed.  I told him on the spot that I would marry him, but that I didn’t love him.”

“I’ll tell you what he answered—­curse him!” exclaimed Sinclair.

“What?”

“Through the years that was comin’, he’d teach you to love him.”

“That was exactly what he said in those very words!  How did you guess that?”

“I’ll tell you I got a sort of a second sight for the ways of a snake, or an ornery hoss, or a sneak of a man.  Go on!”

“I think you have.  At any rate, after I had told him I’d marry him, he pressed me to set the date as early as possible, and I agreed.  There was only a ten-day interval.

“Those ten days were filled.  I kept myself busy so that I wouldn’t have a chance to think about the future, though of course I didn’t really know how I dreaded it.  I talked to the only girl who was near enough to me to be called a friend.

“‘Find a man you can respect.  That’s the main thing,’ she always said.  ‘You’ll learn to love him later on.’

“It was a great comfort to me.  I kept thinking back to that advice all the time.”

“They’s nothing worse than a talky woman,” declared Sinclair hotly.  “Go on!”

“Then, all at once, the day came.  I’ll never forget how I wakened that morning and looked out at the sun.  I had a queer feeling that even the sunshine would never seem the same after that day.  It was like going to a death.”

“So you went to this gent and told him just how you felt, and he let your promise slide?”

“No.”

Sinclair groaned.

“I couldn’t go to him.  I didn’t dare.  I don’t imagine that I ever thought of such a thing.  Then there were crowds of people around all day, giving me good wishes.  And all the time I felt like death.

“Somehow I got to the church.  Everything was hazy to me, and my heart was thundering all the time.  In the church there was a blur of faces.  All at once the blur cleared.  I saw Jude Cartwright, and I knew I couldn’t marry him!”