"I'm nothin'--just nothin'; drug up among the worst; no learnin'--no
raisin'--but _her_--HER!" Nell Beecroft's lips curled in indescribable
scorn. "She's _worse_ than nothin', for she's had her chanst!"
There was no color in the East, only a growing light which made Dr.
Harpe look ashen and haggard when she crawled from the bed and looked at
herself in a square of glass on the wall.
"You sure don't look like a spring chicken in the cold, gray dawn,
Harpe," she said aloud as she made a wry face and ran out her tongue.
"Bilious! A dose of nux vomica for you. That mixed stuff does knock a
fellow's stomach out and no mistake. Moses! I look fierce."
Her head ached dully, her mouth and throat felt parched, and yet withal
she had a feeling of contentment the reason for which did not
immediately penetrate her dull consciousness. She realized only that
some agreeable happening had left her with a sensation of warmth about
her heart.
As she fumbled on the floor for hair-pins, yawning sleepily until her
jaws cracked, she wondered what it was. She stopped in the midst of
twisting her loose hair and her face lighted in sudden recollection.
Ogden Van Lennop! Ah, that was it. She remembered now. She had broken
down his prejudice; she had partially won him over; she had been the
"hit" of the evening; further conquests were in sight and within easy
reach if she played her cards right. And Essie Tisdale--her long upper
lip stretched in its mirthless smile--she would not have her feelings
this morning for a goodly sum.
The thought of Van Lennop accelerated her movements. She must get back
to the hotel before Crowheart was astir, for it might be her ill-luck to
bump into Van Lennop starting on one of his early morning rides. She
had no desire that he should see her in her present plight.
The closeness of the illy-ventilated hospital, with its odors of
disinfectants and sickness, nauseated her slightly as she opened the
door and stepped into the hallway. She frowned at the delirious
mutterings of a typhoid patient at the end of the corridor, for it
reminded her of a threatening epidemic in one of the camps. The sharper
moans of Billy Duncan, whose inflamed and swollen arm was wringing from
him ejaculations of pain, recalled vaguely to her mind something of the
incident of the night before.