no one else knows. Do you think, daddy, if some great English lord should come over here for me that you would give me up to him, and let me be carried back to England and, perhaps, never see you again?”
“Why, Ethel, my darling child,” replied her father, hesitatingly, “I presume that if your heart were set upon it, I would give my consent. Your mother has intimated what we might expect, but it will be a great trial to me, Ethel.”
“Oh, mamma has intimated, has she?” mused Ethel, half to herself. “Listen, daddy – what if a brain-worker, a real American brain-worker, should want – want me – you know, and I should care for him – for this poor brain-worker – care more for him than for all the money in the Bank of England and the titles of all the nobility thrown in – what then, daddy? What then would you do? Would you be on my side, or against me? Tell me, daddy, dear, how would it be?”
The girl’s breath came short and quick, and the last part of her question was uttered in a rapid, jerky fashion. John Horton felt her tremble with suppressed excitement, and a light began to dawn upon him. He imagined, and rightly, that the girl was half-afraid of her mother.
“In such a case as that, Ethel, can you doubt the stand I would take?”
“No, but let me hear you say it, daddy; let me hear you say it – just what you would do.”
“On your side, my daughter, on your side forever, and we would fight to a finish on that line, if it took all the beeves and mavericks on the range.”
“Oh, daddy, daddy,” cried the girl, as she threw her other arm around his neck and gave way to a flood of tears, “I – I love you so – so much!”
Tears sprang to the cattle king’s eyes. Ethel’s soft sobs stole out along the veranda into the calm moonlight and away on the shadows into the woods where they lost themselves among the tall trees and on the wandering night winds. When she reached her own room that night, she wrote a letter to Jack Redfield, which read as follows:
“Dearest Jack: – Daddy is on our side. I am almost too happy to write. I know now what that feeling was, – love, Jack, love for you. Come and see me as soon as you can, and meet the grandest daddy in the whole world. Yes, I love you, love you, love you.
Mrs. Lyman Osborn called the next day, and in her neighborly kindness she consented to carry this letter, with others, from the Horton ranch to the post-office.
On the following day Mrs. J. Bruce-Horton called at the Osborn home.
“My dear Lucy,” said she, sinking into a chair in Mrs. Osborn’s exquisite boudoir, “I felt that I must see you. You attended to the letter properly, I suppose?”
“Trust me for that, my dear Mrs. Horton,” replied Mrs. Osborn, meaningly.
“How good of you,” murmured Mrs. Horton. “I really could not hope to get on at all in this matter if it were not for you.”
“You see my fears in regard to Doctor Redfield were well founded,” replied Mrs. Osborn.
“Indeed, I realize it,” said Mrs. Horton, emphatically, “and now we are confronted by this Mr. Stanton. My husband is really quite charmed with him. I don’t see why Doctor Avondale is so dilatory about coming. I certainly wish he would hasten.”
“My dear Mrs. Horton,” replied her friend, “trust me to guard off this Mr. Stanton. I have already assured him that Miss Ethel is spoken for, and I feel sure that he is too honorable to intrude himself when he regards Ethel as already engaged.”
“But she is not engaged yet – that is the trouble,” exclaimed Mrs. Horton, who at heart was really an estimable woman, although worldly and ambitious to gain a foothold in English aristocracy. Perhaps if she had never met Mrs. Osborn, Ethel might not have been sent to London. In her intercourse with English acquaintances, however, Mrs. Horton herself had become a devotee of the nobility.
“How delightfully innocent you are,” laughed Mrs. Osborn. “Why, my dear Mrs. Horton, of course she is not engaged, but that does not prevent our saying she is, when it will protect the girl.”
“Perhaps you are right,” replied Mrs. Horton, with a sigh, “but I do dislike duplicity, and really, Lucy, I feel worried about that letter. I fear we are hardly doing right, and yet it seems to me that one is forced to questionable measures in a case like this. Why Ethel can’t see the advantage to be derived from a marriage into such an old family as the Avondales is quite past my comprehension.”
“It takes time to cultivate the taste,” replied Mrs. Osborn. “Americans, as a rule, are naturally very stupid, and we American women are especially headstrong; but we, my dear Mrs. Horton, have mixed with the purple, and our eyes have been opened. I doubt not,” she continued, “that either Doctor Redfield or Mr. Stanton would be quite eligible, but then they would develop into men of affairs and, like your husband and mine, would be wedded to their money-making schemes rather than to their wives.”
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