Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/137

Rh had the eager, happy air of a man who is in his element.

Viola was sitting back rather listlessly, with her hands clasped in her lap. She was dressed simply but prettily in gray, and wore no hat. The color was the one most perfectly suited to harmonize with her eyes and hair. Among the handsome and well-dressed women that surrounded her, she preserved the same suggestion of distinction and superiority that Letitia had recognized when she saw her in her own ragged drawing-room.

Holding out the glass, Letitia turned to Gault, who was sitting silent in the shelter of the curtain, and said:

"Colonel Reed 's sitting down there."

He gave the slightest possible start, and moving forward, looked in the direction she indicated.

"So he is," he said in an uninterested tone, "and with his daughter."

Unfortunately, Tod McCormick, who had drawn up as close to Letitia as his chair would permit, heard this short dialogue and pricked up his ears.

"Colonel Reed," he said vivaciously, "and his daughter? Where?"

He bent forward, his lean neck stretched out, his weazened visage full of a curiosity that was only naïvely boyish, but that on his ugly and