Nevertheless, she had gaily laid a wager with Grace that she would, in less than the allotted two-months of her stay, bedeck her belt with the scalp of every cowpuncher within a radius of ten miles from the C Bar. And when, as the day of their departure for the West approached, Miss Carter realized that Mrs. Brevoort was in earnest, she wished that she had been less urgent in her conventional invitation: it is ever a dubious venture, this turning of one's pet preserve over to the questionable mercies of a skillful and calloused hunter.
Well, there was no danger now, she was thinking with a sad sinking of heart, as she looked wistfully at a cluster of long-dried heart's-ease in her escritoire. It was over and done with, and that chapter of her life was closed forever. For Abbie had, in a fit of self-reproach, told her of her taunt on that eventful night and she had instantly divined his thoughts and deductions. Her first impulse had been to write him and indignantly deny--what? He had not given voice to any such belief in her duplicity, and how was she to assume that he entertained such a thought without giving color and grounds for his suspicion? And then, again, he had not left any address and it would be impossible to reach him by mail. She knew him well enough to know that he would never again look upon her willingly in his foolish and unjustified resentment, and the probabilities of a consistent explanation were all against her. He had never written her one word during her eastern sojourn; his letters had been all of a purely business nature, curt and brief, always addressed to her brother and only containing the conventionally-required remembrances to herself. And now the over-wide gulf was forever unbridgable. In her desolation and heartache she cried herself to sleep.
Constance Brevoort's two months had lengthened into five and it was now October. Her experience had been unique and so diverting that the attractions of the eastern metropolis had paled before the more virile and exciting possibilities of this life primitive, and it had required but slight persuasion on the part of the Carters to induce her to prolong her stay until the time of their own return to New York.