Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/213

Rh of worthy attempts that an unjust fate had frustrated. Just what he had meant by using his daughter's name in his intercourse with Gault he himself hardly knew—nothing to her actual detriment, that was certain. If any one had breathed a word of blame against her, or tried to harm one hair of her head, he would have been quick to rise in her defense, wrathful as a tiger. The wrongs that do not come directly back, like boomerangs, were wrongs the responsibility of which the colonel readily shifted from his shoulders. He had wanted money for Viola, and he used the readiest means to his hand to get it. The jingling of gold in his pocket, the gladness of her face when he brought her some trifling gift, made everything outside the pleasure of the moment count for naught.

And now they were estranged. A veil of indissoluble coldness separated them. Yet she was never curt or sharp or cross to him. Sometimes it seemed to him that she was the same in word and voice and manner as she had always been, only something had gone from her—light, cheer, gaiety, some inexpressible, loving, lovely thing that had made her the star of his life. Once, taking his courage in both hands, he had asked her if she was angry with him, and then shrank like a whipped dog before the startled negation of her eyes and her quick "Why, no, father! How could I be?"