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She did not quite know what she had expected to find in Mesa. Certainly she knew that Indians were no longer on the map, and cowboys were kicking up their last dust before vanishing, but she had supposed that they had left compensations in their wake. On the principle that adventures are to the adventurous, her life should have been a whirl of hairbreadth escapes.
But what happened? She took all sorts of chances without anything coming of it. Her pirate fiance was the nearest approach to an adventure she had flushed, and this pink-and-white chit of a married schoolgirl had borrowed him for the most splendid bit of excitement that would happen in a hundred years. She had been spinning around the country in motor-cars for months without the sign of a blizzard, but the chit had hit one the first time. It wasn't fair. That was her blizzard by rights. In spirit, at least, she had "spoken for it," as she and her brother used to say when they were children of some coveted treasure not yet available. Virginia was quite sure that if she had seen Waring Ridgway at the inspired moment when he was plowing through the drifts with Mrs. Harley in his arms—only, of course, it would have been she instead of Mrs. Harley, and he would not have been carrying her so long as she could stand and take it—she would have fallen in love with him on the spot. And those two days in the cabin on half-ration they would have put an end forever to her doubts and to that vision of Lyndon Hobart that persisted in her mind. What luck glace' some people did have!
But Virginia discovered the chit to be rather a different personality than she had supposed. In truth, she lost her heart to her at once. She could have stood out against Aline's mere good looks and been the stiffer for them. She was no MAN, to be moved by the dark hair's dusky glory, the charm of soft girlish lines, the effect of shy unsophistication that might be merely the highest art of social experience. But back of the sweet, trembling mouth that seemed to be asking to be kissed, of the pathetic appeal for friendliness from the big, deep violet eyes, was a quality of soul not to be counterfeited. Miss Balfour had furbished up the distant hauteur of the society manner she had at times used effectively, but she found herself instead taking the beautiful, forlorn little creature in her arms.
"Oh, my dear; my dear, how glad I am that dreadful blizzard did not hurt you!"
Aline clung to this gracious young queen as if she had known her a lifetime. "You are so good to me everybody is. You know how Mr. Ridgway saved me. If it had not been for him I should have died. I didn't care—I wanted to die in peace, I think—but he wouldn't let me."
"I should think not."
"If you only knew him—perhaps you do."
"A little," confessed Virginia, with a flash of merry eyes at Mrs. Mott.
"He is the bravest man—and the strongest."
"Yes. He is both," agreed his betrothed, with pride.
"His tenderness, his unselfishness, his consideration for others—did you ever know anybody like him for these things?"
"Never," agreed Virginia, with the mental reservations that usually accompanied her skeptical smile. She was getting at her fiance from a novel point of view.
"And so modest, with all his strength and courage.',
"It's almost a fault in him," she murmured.
"The woman that marries him will be blessed among women."
"I count it a great privilege," said Miss Balfour absently, but she pulled up with a hurried addendum: "To have known him."
"Indeed, yes. If one met more men like him this would be a better world."
"It would certainly be a different world."
It was a relief to Aline to talk, to put into words the external skeleton facts of the surging current that had engulfed her existence since she had turned a corner upon this unexpected consciousness of life running strong and deep. Harley was not a confidant she could have chosen under the most favorable circumstances, and her instinct told her that in this matter he was particularly impossible. But to Virginia Balfour—Mrs. Mott had to leave early to preside over the Mesa Woman's Club, and her friend allowed herself to be persuaded to stay longer—she did not find it at all hard to talk. Indeed, she murmured into the sympathetic ear of this astute young searcher of hearts more than her words alone said, with the result that Virginia guessed what she herself had not yet quite found out, though her heart was hovering tremblingly on the brink of discovery.
But Virginia's sympathy for the trouble fate had in store for this helpless innocent consisted with an alert appreciation of its obvious relation to herself. What she meant to discover was the attitude toward the situation of one neither particularly innocent nor helpless. Was he, too, about to be "caught in the coil of a God's romances," or was he merely playing on the vibrating strings of an untaught heart?
It was in part to satisfy this craving for knowledge that she wrote Ridgway a note as soon as she reached home. It said:
MY DEAR RECREANT LAGGARD: If you are not too busy playing Sir Lancelot to fair dames in distress, or splintering lances with the doughty husbands of these same ladies, I pray you deign to allow your servant to feast her eyes upon her lord's face. Hopefully and gratefully yours, VIRGINIA.
P. S.—Have you forgotten, sir, that I have not seen you since that terrible blizzard and your dreadful imprisonment in Fort Salvation?
P. P. S.—I have seen somebody else, though. She's a dear, and full of your praises. I hardly blame you.
V.
She thought that ought to bring him soon, and it did.
"I've been busy night and day," he apologized when they met.
Virginia gave him a broadside demurely.
"I suppose your social duties do take up a good deal of your time."
"My social duties? Oh, I see!" He laughed appreciation of her hit. Evidently through her visit she knew a good deal more than he had expected. Since he had nothing to hide from her except his feelings, this did not displease him. "My duties in that line have been confined to one formal call."
She sympathized with him elaborately. "Calls of that sort do bore men so. I'll not forget the first time you called on me."
"Nor I," he came back gallantly.
"I marveled how you came through alive, but I learned then that a man can't be bored to death."
"I came again nevertheless," he smiled. "And again—and again."
"I am still wondering why."
"'Oh, wad some power the giffie gite us
To see ourselves as others see us!"'
he quoted with a bow.
"Is that a compliment?" she asked dubiously.
"I have never heard it used so before. Anyhow, it is a little hackneyed for anybody so original as you."
"It was the best I could do offhand."
She changed the subject abruptly. "Has the new campaign of the war begun yet?"
"Well, we're maneuvering for position."
"You've seen him. How does he impress you?"
"The same as he does others. A hard, ruthless fighter. Unless all signs fail, he is an implacable foe."
"But you are not afraid?"
He smiled. "Do I look frightened?"
"No, you remind me of something a burglar once told me—"
"A what?"
"A burglar—a reformed burglar!" She gave him a saucy flash of her dark eyes. "Do you think I don't know any lawbreakers except those I have met in this State?