Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/316

 greater claim than duty, she said; he must stop at the ranch one night to refresh himself before riding to the range. Besides, she had matters of importance to disclose.

But it seemed difficult for her to bring herself to tell what she had held him there to communicate. She was serene after the storm that had shaken her like a young pine on the mountain-side, refined and sweet, Barrett thought, as a violet after rain. Now that the great understanding had come between them, in the greatest matter of business that ever arises in the lives of maids and men, all other affairs could wait her pleasure while she drank deeply in the blissful peace of this.

At last she came to it, like a truant to her tasks. She turned a little on the bench where she sat at Barrett's side, so that she faced him, and regarded him in such a long silence that he began to fear some new trouble had shown itself in her course.

"I've been slow to speak of it, Ed, because I'm afraid it doesn't reflect much credit on Uncle Hal," she said. "Of course I don't hold the mad tyranny of that night against him now, for I know he had been driven out of his mind. He was insane."

Barrett took her hand and held it tenderly between his, as if he warmed a nestling picked up from the sodden, storm-beaten ground.

"I'm afraid that is a defense too common to be accepted at the bar where Hal Nearing stands to plead this day," he said. "You can forgive him, for it is a woman's office to forgive. But he was a poor, weak, cowardly human vessel, full of the vile frailties that