He broke off for a moment, and waved his hand. "After all," he added, "what right have you to think it now?"

Mrs. Hastings laughed somewhat harshly. "Unfortunately, I have my eyes, but I'll admit that there's a certain obligation on me to make quite certain before going any further. That's why I want you to ascertain where he checked his baggage to."

"I'm afraid that's more than I'm willing to undertake. Do you consider it advisable to set the station agent wondering about the thing?

Besides, once or twice in my career appearances have been rather badly against me, and I'm not altogether convinced yet."

Mrs. Hastings let the matter drop, and they went back rather silently to the hotel. As soon as supper was past, Mrs. Hastings bade Sproatly get their wagon out and she drove away with Agatha. During the long, cold journey she said very little to the girl, and they had no opportunity of private conversation when they reached the homestead where they were to spend the night. Agatha hated herself for the thought in her mind, but everything seemed to warrant it, and it would not be driven out. She had heard what Gregory had called Sally at the hotel, and the fact that he must have bought his ticket and checked his baggage earlier in the afternoon when there was n.o.body about, so that he could run down with Sally at the last moment, evidently in order to escape observation, was very significant.

The two women went home next day, and on the following morning a man, who was driving in to Lander's, brought Mrs. Hastings a note from Sproatly. It was very brief, and ran:

"Gregory arrived same night by Pacific train. It is evident he must have got off at the next station down the line."

Mrs. Hastings showed it to her husband.

"I'm afraid we have been too hasty. What am I to do with this?" she said.

Hastings smiled. "Since you ask my advice, I'd put it into the stove."

"But it clears the man. Isn't it my duty to show it to Agatha?"

"Well," said Hastings reflectively, "I'm not sure that it is your duty to put ideas into her mind when you can't be quite certain that she has entertained them."

"I should be greatly astonished if she hadn't," answered Mrs. Hastings.

Hastings made an expressive gesture. "Oh," he remarked, "you'll no doubt do what you think wisest. When you come to me for advice you have usually made up your mind, and you merely expect me to tell you that you're right."

Mrs. Hastings thought over the matter for another hour or two. For one thing, Agatha's quiet manner puzzled her, and she did not know that the girl had pa.s.sed a night in agony of anger and humiliation, and had then become conscious of a relief of which she was ashamed. There was, however, no doubt that while Agatha blamed herself in some degree for what had happened, she did feel as if a weight had been lifted from her heart. She was sitting alone in a shadowy room watching the light die off the snowy prairie outside, when Mrs. Hastings came softly in and sat down beside her.

"My dear," said Mrs. Hastings, "it's rather difficult to speak of, but that little scene at the station must have hurt you."

Agatha looked at her quietly and searchingly, but there was only sympathy in her face, and she leaned forward impulsively.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "it hurt me horribly, because I feel it was my fault. I was the cause of it!"

"How could that be?"

"If I had only been kinder to Gregory he would, perhaps, never have thought of that girl. I must have made it clear that he jarred upon me. I drove him"--Agatha turned her face away, while her voice trembled--"into that woman's arms. No doubt she was ready to make the most of the opportunity."

Mrs. Hastings thought that the girl's scorn and disgust were perfectly natural, even though, as it happened, they were not quite warranted.

"In the first place," she suggested, "I think you had better read this note."

Agatha took the note, and there was light enough left to show that the blood had crept into her face when she laid it down again. For almost a minute she sat very still.

"It is a great relief to know that I was wrong--in one respect, but you must not think I hated this girl because Gregory had preferred her to me," she said at last. "When the first shock had pa.s.sed, there was an almost horrible satisfaction in feeling that he had released me--at any cost. I suppose I shall always be ashamed of that."

She broke off a moment, and her voice was very steady when she went on again:

"Still, what Sproatly says does not alter the case so much after all. It can't free me of my responsibility. If I hadn't driven him, Gregory would not have gone to her."

"You consider that in itself a very dreadful thing?"

Agatha looked at Mrs. Hastings with suddenly lifted head. "Of course,"

she answered. "Can you doubt it?"

Mrs. Hastings laughed, though there was a little gleam in her eyes, for this was an opportunity for which she had been waiting.

"Then," she said, "you spoke like an Englishwoman--of station--just out from the Old Country--but I'm going to try to disabuse you of one impression. Sally, to put it crudely, is quite good enough for Gregory.

In fact, if she had been my daughter I'd have kept him away from her. To begin with, once you strip Gregory of his little surface graces, and his clean English intonation, how does he compare with the men you meet out here? What does his superiority consist of? Is he truer or kinder than you have found most of them to be? Has he a finer courage, or a more resolute endurance--a greater capacity for labor, or a clearer knowledge of the calling by which he makes his living?"

Agatha did not answer. She could not protest that Gregory possessed any of these qualities, and Mrs. Hastings continued:

"Has he even a more handsome person? I could point to a dozen men between here and the railroad, whose clean, self-denying lives have set a stamp on them that Gregory will never wear. To descend to perhaps the lowest point of all, has he more money? We know he wasted what he had--probably in indulgence--and there is a mortgage on his farm. Has he any sense of honor? He let Sally believe he was in love with her before you even came out here, and of late, while he still claimed you, he has gone back to her. Can't you get away from your point of view, and realize what kind of a man he is?"

Agatha turned her head away. "Ah!" she cried, "I realized him--several months ago. They were painful months to me. But you are quite sure he was in love with Sally before I came out?"

"Well," Mrs. Hastings declared, "his conduct suggested it." She laid a caressing hand on the girl's shoulder. "You tried to keep faith with him. Tried desperately, I think. Did you succeed?"

Agatha contrived to meet the older woman's eyes.

"At least, I would have married him."

"Then," a.s.serted Mrs. Hastings, "I can forgive Gregory even his treachery, and you have no cause to pity him. Sally is simple--primitive, you would call her--but she's clever and capable in all practical things.

She will bear with Gregory when you would turn from him in dismay, and, when it is necessary, she will not shrink from putting a little judicious pressure on him in a way you could not have done. It may sound incomprehensible, but that girl will lead or drive Gregory very much further than he could have gone with you. She doesn't regard him as perfection, but she loves him."

Mrs. Hastings paused, and for several minutes there was a tense silence in the little shadowy room. It had grown almost dark, and the square of the window glimmered faintly with the dim light flung up by the snow.

Agatha turned slowly in her chair. "Thank you," she said in a low voice.

"You have taken a heavy weight off my mind."

She paused a moment, and then added, "You have been a good friend all along. It was supreme good fortune that placed me in your hands."

Mrs. Hastings patted her shoulder, and then went out quietly. Agatha lay still in her chair beside the stove. The fire snapped and crackled cheerfully, but except for the pleasant sound, there was a restful quietness. The room was cozily warm, though its occupant could hear a little icy wind wail about the building. It swept Agatha's thoughts away to the frozen North, and she realized what it had cost her to keep faith with Gregory as she pictured a little snow-sheeted schooner hemmed in among the floes, and two or three worn-out men hauling a sled painfully over the ridged and furrowed ice. The man who had gone up into that great desolation had been endued with an almost fantastic sense of honor, and now he might never even know that she loved him. She admitted that she had loved him for several months.

CHAPTER XXIII

THROUGH THE SNOW

Next morning, the mail-carrier, who, half-frozen and white all over, drove up to the homestead out of a haze of falling snow, brought Agatha a note from Gregory. The note was brief, and Agatha read it with a smile of half-amused contempt, though she admitted that, considering everything, he had handled the embarra.s.sing situation gracefully. This att.i.tude, however, was only what she had expected, and she recognized that it was characteristic of Hawtrey that he had written releasing her from her engagement instead of seeking an interview. Gregory, as she realized now, had always taken the easiest way, and it was evident that he had not even the courage to face her. She quietly dropped the note--it did not seem worth while to fling it--into the stove.

Agatha could forgive Gregory for choosing Sally. Though she was very human in most respects, that scarcely troubled her, but she could not forgive him for persisting in his claim to her while he was philandering--and this seemed the most fitting term--with her rival. Had he only been honest, she would not have let Wyllard go away without some a.s.surance of her regard which would have cheered the brave seafarer on his perilous journey. And it was clear to her that Wyllard might never come back again! Her face grew hard when she thought of it, and she had thought of it frequently.

For that double-dealing she felt she almost hated Gregory.

A month pa.s.sed drearily, with Arctic frost outside on the prairie, and little to do inside the homestead except to cook and gorge the stove, and endeavor to keep warmth in one's body. Water froze solid inside the house, stinging draughts crept in through the double windows, and there were evenings when Mrs. Hastings and Agatha, shivering close beside the stove, waited anxiously for the first sign of Hastings and the hired man, who were bringing back a sled loaded with birch logs from a neighboring bluff. The bluff was only a few miles away, but men sent out to cut fuel in the awful cold snaps in that country have now and then sunk down in the snow with the life frozen out of them. There were other days when the wooden building seemed to rock beneath the buffeting of the icy hurricane, and it was a perilous matter to cross the narrow open s.p.a.ce between it and the stables through the haze of swirling snow.