Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/197

Rh further from him. His only thought was to repair the damage he had done, to climb back somehow into his old position. He tried to anticipate her every wish, and followed her about with humble offers of help. But when, during those days of work and hurry, her eyes met his, they seemed to him to have a hard and alien gleam. It struck upon his somewhat vague contrition like an icy wind. If she had been gay and talkative he would have forgotten the wrong he had done her in twenty-four hours, and been ready to laugh with her at Gault. But she seemed now to have suddenly ranged herself against him on Gault's side, and to have left him, chilled and solitary, out in the cold.

So when she told him they would go to Sacramento, though the thought of change turned his heart to lead, he agreed with a good grace. He also acquiesced in all her injunctions about keeping their place of refuge a secret. When she told him of her plan to return Gault's money, he controlled his desire to disagree with it, and accepted her decision without open murmur. It seemed to him an unnecessary waste. What were the few paltry hundreds to the rich man? The colonel had been rich, too, and had aided hundreds of needy ones without ever thinking of repayment. By some obscure mental processes he had come to believe that