As, in the seclusion of Lee’s bedroom that night, she and the widow sat side by side, talking at each other in the wide mirror while making their night toilets, a “movie-man” would have given his head to reproduce the scene with its witcheries in the way of unbound hair, filmy white, glimpses of polished shoulders. But in his absence these may be left where they belong—behind the secure guard of Lee’s oaken door. Sufficient for the present is their conversation.

“So we’ve engaged ourself, have we?” As with Gordon, Mrs. Mills went straight to the bat.

“Why—” Pausing with comb and one yellow curl held in midair, Lee looked her utter surprise at the smiling face in the glass. “Mary Mills! whoever told you?”

“This and these would be enough.” The widow touched the girl’s pale cheeks and shadowed eyes. “But I caught your young man, coming in, and made him confess. So we got mad—because he kissed another girl, and took it out of him by engaging ourself on the spot? Oh, you little fool!”

Dropping the curl, Lee straightened and stiffened till she looked in the filmy nightrobe like a cold and classic marble. “If it had been Phyllis or Phoebe Lovell, or any other nice girl, I wouldn’t have cared. But—a peona.”

“Well, what of it?” Assured, now, of the truth of her surmises, the widow went confidently forward. “She’s mighty pretty.”

“But a peona! And you know her.”

“Yes, and I know him—better than you do. Now look here, my dear—” Followed a little lecture on the creature, Man, that showed she had profited by her married experience. “A man is a man and there’s no sense in trying to have him anything else. When a girl loves, she excludes, for the time at least, all others from her life. But a man—while he may love one girl with all his strength, he can still see beauty in others. Nature made him that way and we have simply got to stand for it. Now if Gordon had been ten years older, I’d have allowed you real reason. After thirty a man’s kisses mean something. But at Gordon’s age they are thistledown and light as air, belong to vanity rather than love. A young fellow is so proud of having kissed a pretty girl that he swells up like a turkey gobbler and struts in his self-esteem without thought for anything else. Then, you, yourself, are mostly to blame. Why—”

Next a little lecture on the sin of flirting, with appropriate personal applications which were, however, interrupted by the person. “You didn’t flirt with him, of course.”

“Goodness, child! don’t bite me! I couldn’t see the poor boy crushed into the face of the earth. Now listen.” After detailing Gordon’s confession, of the injured pride, anger, pique that he had tried to solace in Felicia’s smiles, she concluded, “But you—after driving him to desperation go and make the vital mistake of your life.”

“And you think that was the way of it? That he didn’t really mean anything?”

“Didn’t he tell me so himself?”

“Well—” she pondered, looking at the widow in the glass, then suddenly collapsed on the other’s warm shoulder. “Oh, I’m so glad! I—I hate him!”

The widow, being a woman, quite understood these contradictions. “Of course you do.” She gently fondled the fair head. “How much?”

The head rose in order to execute a vehement nod. “I hate him so much I—I could just kill any other girl that tried to take him!” With a wild sob the face burrowed again into the soft shoulder.

“Well, they’ll try, all right.”

The head rose again, startled eyes, big and brown, staring from the glass. “Do you—really think so?”

“What do you expect—a nice boy like that to mope and pine for the rest of his life with ten million girls of marriageable age running loose in the United States? What brought him here, anyway—bolting to escape one girl’s noose. Take my advice and rope him quick.”

“But I’m promised, now, to Ramon.”

“Call it off.”

“Oh no.” Sitting up straight, she shook her head. “I cannot ruin his life.”

“Hum!” The widow coughed. “You cannot ruin his life? So you intend to bless it by devoting to his service affections that belong to another? Also to cut him off from the greatest thing in the world—the real love of some other woman? Ruin his life, indeed? Lee, I always credited you with a little sense.”

“There is something in that.” She snatched at the hope. “The best thing is to tell him I don’t love him and leave it to him to decide.”

“And he’ll do it, have no fear!” The widow tossed her head. “Ramon’s nice, but he cannot rise above his race, and you know very well there’s neither reason nor justice nor the instinct of fairness in it. Fancy a Mexican giving up a girl because she loves another! He’d resent even the suggestion, take his revenge after marriage.”

The gleam of hope had died. She sighed. “I can try.”

“Oh, you little fool!” In her irritation the widow bestowed a smart slap on the girl’s shoulder. But she spoiled the moral effect the next second by gathering her in her arms. “Don’t you know that up in the States girls take on a new beau every Saturday night and break the engagement the following Sunday?”

But the precedent produced only a second envious sigh. “I wish I could do it. I guess I wasn’t brought up right.”

“’Tisn’t training; it’s heredity. You’re your father over again; will go your own way. I wash my hands of you.”

That charitable process known as “washing one’s hands of anybody” was, however, the last thing Mrs. Mills was capable of. The assertion simply marked a change of plan which, rising early next morning, she inaugurated when she caught Bull on his way to the stables.

Though he had sat next to her during the long pleasant evening that followed supper last night, the others’ presence had debarred private communications. Content to hear her voice running with Lee’s in happy chatter—so content, indeed, that he forgot for the time being the impending trouble—Bull had smoked furiously in the dusk till they retired to bed.

He listened, now, in silence while the widow told of Lee’s engagement. But the sudden lowering of his black brows was far more dangerous than any threat. She laid her hand on his arm in sudden alarm.

“Easy, my friend. Don’t be too quick. She isn’t married yet, and won’t be—if you leave it to me.”

More powerful than the plea was her gentle pressure. Apart from certain accidental contacts, before mentioned, which had caused him such pleasurable embarrassment, it was the first time she had actually touched him. Big, burly, black giant that he was, he still trembled like a school-girl; trembled so violently that she felt it and dropped both her hand and her eyes. Transferring the embarrassment to herself, that helped him mightily. He was the first to break a confused but happy silence.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing, just now, except to let Gordon ride with me a piece of the way home.”

It was impossible to overlook his sudden disappointment. With characteristic frankness she did not wait for him to tell it. “I’d rather have you; there are so many things I want to consult you about. Dear me!” Her little vexed face was very comforting; it expressed such sincere feeling. “These young folks certainly do make one a lot of trouble. Betty wanted you so badly at my party—and so did I; but we just had to ask Gordon to help Lee out. But I’m going to settle this business right quick. And when it is all over—you will come and make us a real visit, won’t you?”

Wouldn’t he? His nod and effulgent grin expressed happiness in the prospect beyond the powers of his slow tongue. Satisfied, she proceeded.

“So let me have him this once. Lee is going to ride a few miles with us, and before she comes back—”

But the matter of her communication is covered by her talk with Gordon, whom she caught coming out of the bunk-house five minutes later.

“I argued with her half the night,” she told him, walking along at his side. “Goodness me, young man, you don’t know what you are up against! Such obstinacy! Lucky for you that it is balanced by a sweet temper and strong sense of justice. All I gained was her promise to beg off from Ramon. She plans to go over and see him some time this week, and if she does—well, with Isabel loving her to death, the old man tendering sage advice, and Ramon passionately pleading his cause, they’ll have her to the priest and married before she has time to think. She mustn’t go.”

“But if she is so obstinate—” Gordon began.

“I’ll take care of that. I shall call on Ramon on the way home and explain the true state of his lady’s heart. Of course he’ll raise Cain and probably damn me for a black-hearted liar, but I can stand it. The point is—he will come right over here. In the mean time you must get busy. A declaration in hand is worth two suspected, and though I’ve hinted very strongly that you are not altogether indifferent to her sweet self, it will make Ramon’s task ten times harder if she hears it from your lips. Now listen!”

The rest was plot, dark and devious. Lee had promised to ride with her a few miles on the homeward journey, and Bull would detail him, Gordon, for her escort. Coming back, he would have all the time in the world.