Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/79

 couragement of the novice. Her gloomy spell of dissatisfaction appeared to have passed quite away; she chatted lightly through the meal, her clouded spirits seeming to have been transferred, like a Brahman's sickness, to her aunt.

The elder woman was downcast, nervous, distrait. Barrett saw that she looked often across at her husband with what he read as an unspoken appeal in her face, a fear in her eyes. That he had read her uneasiness perfectly was disclosed when it came to mounting and riding away. She came then to the porch and clung to her husband, a pain of great anxiety and distress evident in her bearing, as if he rode on a mission ambuscaded by perils, and not a simple journey across some forty miles of prairie and foothill plains.

What Nearing said to her, Barrett did not hear, for he withdrew apart out of delicacy. But he saw the rancher stroke her hair and caress her hand assuringly as he held it with a cavalier's gallant tenderness a moment before he kissed her and came down the steps to mount.

Alma went with Barrett to where the horses stood, to wish him well of his venture. But neither she nor Mrs. Nearing invited him to return to the house. He felt, as he swung into the saddle, that their silence told him he was riding out from his state of equality with them into a lower plane, from which he must come purged by advancements and success before he might stand in their presence again.

Out of regard for his strangeness to the saddle, the rancher set Barrett an easy pace, for which the sailor