"He said mother was in a very low state of vitality and that she must be
very careful, which was easy enough to say. But how can I get her to rest
and to diet? You have seen how little she cares for the doctor's orders.
He told her not to touch alcohol."
"She is more like a man than a woman," he answered.
She led the way into the small sitting-room which lay at the front of the
house, and directly opposite the door of her own room. It was filled with
shabby parlor furniture, and in one corner stood a worn couch. "I'm sorry,
but I can offer nothing better," she said. "Every bed is taken, but I have
plenty of blankets."
There was something delightfully suggestive in being thus waited upon by a
young and handsome woman, and the ranger submitted to it with the awkward
grace of one unaccustomed to feminine care. The knowledge that the girl
was beneath him in birth, and that she was considered to be (in a sense)
the lovely flower of a corrupt stock, made the manifest innocency of her
voice and eyes the more appealing. He watched her moving about the room
with eyes in which a furtive flame glowed.
"This seems a long way from that dinner at Redfield's, doesn't it?" he
remarked, as she turned from spreading the blankets on the couch.
"It is another world," she responded, and her face took on a musing
gravity.
Then they faced each other in silence, each filled with the same delicious
sense of weakness, of danger, reluctant to say good-night, longing for the
closer touch which dawning love demanded, and yet--something in the girl
defended her, defeated him.
"You must call me if I can be of any help," he repeated, and his voice was
tremulous with feeling.
"I will do so," she answered.
Still they did not part. His voice was very tender as he said, "I don't
like to see you exposed to such experiences."
"I was not afraid--only for you a little," she answered.
"The Redfields like you. Eleanor told me she would gladly help you. Why do
you stay here?"
"I cannot leave my mother."
"I'm not so sure of your duty in that regard. She got on without you for
ten years. You have a right to consider yourself. You don't belong here."
"Neither do you," she retorted.
"Oh yes, I do--at least, the case is different with me; my work is here.
It hurts me to think of going back to the hills, leaving you here in the
midst of these wolves."
He was talking now in the low, throbbing utterance of a man carried out of
himself. "It angers me to think that the worst of these loafers, these
drunken beasts, can glare at you--can speak to you. They have no right to
breathe the same air with one like you."
She did not smile at this; his voice, his eyes were filled with the
gravity of the lover whose passion is not humorous. Against his training,
his judgment, he was being drawn into closer and closer union with this
daughter of violence, and he added: "You may not see me in the morning."
"You must not go without seeing my mother. You must have your breakfast
with us. It hurt us to think you didn't come to us for supper."
Her words meant little, but the look in her eyes, the music in her voice,
made him shiver. He stammered: "I--I must return to my duties to-morrow. I
should go back to-night."
"You mustn't do that. You can't do that. You are to appear before the
judge."