Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/196

184 The thought of Gault's reappearance filled her with dread. She was confident of his return, and his return as the conqueror who had gaged her weakness and his own power. All her trust in him had been shattered at a blow. Suddenly he had appeared to her, not as the lover whose highest wish was for her happiness, but as the master, cruel and relentless, the owner who had bought and paid for her. The shame of the thought that she still loved him caused her to bow her face upon her breast, hiding it from the eyes of men and the light of day. All she could whisper in her own justification was the words, "But when I grew to love him I never knew—I never guessed for a minute what he meant."

She wanted to begin all over again, to be another person in another place. The charm of home had vanished from the little house. She longed to put it behind her, to be a different woman from the Viola Reed who once within its narrow walls had known the taste of happiness.

She was so engrossed in her own sorrows that she thought nothing of her father, heretofore the first consideration of her life. She told him what he should do, and he did it unquestioningly. Though no more angry words had passed between them, it seemed to the frightened old man as if every day she receded