Ridgway of Montana | Page 7

he did not even
pretend much. He wanted her because she was a step up in the social
ladder, and, in his opinion, the most attractive girl he knew. That he
was not in love with her relieved the situation, as Miss Balfour
admitted to herself in impersonal moods. But there were times when
she could have wished he were. She felt it to be really due her
attractions that his pulses should quicken for her, and in the interests of
experience she would have liked to see how he would make love if he
really meant it from the heart and not the will.
"It's really an awful bother," she sighed.
"Referring to the little problem of your future?"
"Yes."
"Can't make up your mind whether I come in?"
"No." She looked up brightly, with an effect of impulsiveness. "I don't
suppose you want to give me another week?"

"A reprieve! But why? You're going to marry me."
"I suppose so." She laughed. "I wish I could have my cake, and eat it,
too."
"It would be a moral iniquity to encourage such a system of ethics."
"So you won't give me a week?" she sighed. "All sorts of things might
have happened in that week. I shall always believe that the fairy prince
would have come for me."
"Believe that he HAS come," he claimed.
"Oh, I didn't mean a prince of pirates, though there is a triumph in
having tamed a pirate chief to prosaic matrimony. In one way it will be
a pity, too. You won't be half so picturesque. You remember how
Stevenson puts it: 'that marriage takes from a man the capacity for great
things, whether good or bad.'"
"I can stand a good deal of taming."
"Domesticating a pirate ought to be an interesting process," she
conceded, her rare smile flashing. "It should prove a cure for ENNUI,
but then I'm never a victim of that malady."
"Am I being told that I am to be the happiest pirate alive?"
"I expect you are."
His big hand gripped hers till it tingled. She caught his eye on a roving
quest to the door.
"We don't have to do that," she announced hurriedly, with an
embarrassed flush.
"I don't do it because I have to," he retorted, kissing her on the lips.
She fell back, protesting. "Under the circumstances--"

The butler, with a card on a tray, interrupted silently. She glanced at the
card, devoutly grateful his impassive majesty's entrance had not been a
moment earlier.
"Show him in here."
"The fairy prince, five minutes too late?" asked Ridgway, when the
man had gone.
For answer she handed him the card, yet he thought the pink that
flushed her cheek was something more pronounced than usual. But he
was willing to admit there might be a choice of reasons for that.
"Lyndon Hobart" was the name he read.
"I think the Consolidated is going to have its innings. I should like to
stay, of course, but I fear I must plead a subsequent engagement and
leave the field to the enemy."
Pronouncing "Mr. Hobart" without emphasis, the butler vanished. The
newcomer came forward with the quiet assurance of the born aristocrat.
He was a slender, well-knit man, dressed fastidiously, with clear-cut,
classical features; cool, keen eyes, and a gentle, you-be-damned
manner to his inferiors. Beside him Ridgway bulked too large, too
florid. His ease seemed a little obvious, his prosperity overemphasized.
Even his voice, strong and reliant, lacked the tone of gentle blood that
Hobart had inherited with his nice taste.
When Miss Balfour said: "I think you know each other," the manager
of the Consolidated bowed with stiff formality, but his rival laughed
genially and said: "Oh, yes, I know Mr. Hobart." The geniality was
genuine enough, but through it ran a note of contempt. Hobart read in it
a veiled taunt. To him it seemed to say
"Yes, I have met him, and beaten him at every turn of the road, though
he has been backed by a power with resources a hundred times as great
as mine."

In his parting excuses to Miss Balfour, Ridgway's audacity crystallized
in words that Hobart could only regard as a shameless challenge. "I
regret that an appointment with Judge Purcell necessitates my leaving
such good company," he said urbanely.
Purcell was the judge before whom was pending a suit between the
Consolidated and the Mesa Ore-producing Company, to determine the
ownership of the Never Say Die Mine; and it was current report that
Ridgway owned him as absolutely as he did the automobile waiting for
him now at the door.
If Ridgway expected his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of
repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in
his slender grace, was