“I must confess that I can not bring my mind to a decision, Mr. Saul,” answered Mistress Patty Laughton, blushing and curtsying prettily.
“It is surely not for your lack of worldly goods that you hesitate,” persisted Slick-heels Saul. “As for what your father is owing me, it shall, at the moment of your acceptance, be wiped entirely from the books.”
Patty was incensed at the hint of insolence in the gambler's allusion to her improvident father's financial condition.
“Believe me, Mr. Saul,” she said, with spirit, “no ulterior motive for worldly advancement has the power to coerce my afflections.”
“But you will consider my proposition of marriage?”
Patty's honest gaze encountered the appraising glint in the coot grey eyes of the foppish scape-grace before her. She lowered her own eys quickly to hid a hunted look in their dark depths as she answered:
“Sir, after the week of races, you shall have your answer.”
“And then I shall give up my present means of gaining a livelihood, and, repairing to San Francisco, shall enter into a profession more fitting the social station of the lady who is to become my wife.” He bowed deeply and withdrew, leaving Patty with a sad face and tearfilled eyes.
At last she straightened her tall figure resolutely. “I must not give way to tears. I can not! I will not! There must be some way to pay my father's debts beside this extremity, to which death is almost preferable. There is still a week's time. A week--only a week.” Panic overwhelmed her, and when someone gently took her hand, she cried aloud in terror.
“Why, Sweetheart, do I frighten you so? I waited long upon the mesa near the speed-track at the spot we had agreed upon, and when you did not come I fared forth to meet you.”
“Dear, I have about $2000 which I am resolved to play on the races. I will win. I must. Old Irish Mike has brought over his whole stableful of saddle horses and I was raised in Kentucky. Do not despair, we shall beat the gambler at his own game. Here is Mike, now. Perhaps--Mike, it's a fine string of horses you've picked up.
“It is so. Many a thoroughbred I've bought that came all the way from Kentucky or Missouri. All that had the stamina to get to Californy, the one thing left that many of the poor devils could sell when they reached the coast.”