“A sweet sight you’ll be!” said Ida disgustedly. “And the miners--Oh, they’ll just love the idea of having a woman at their heels! What on earth has got hold of you? It’s the only time I’ve ever known you to get off your base. Why, there’s nothing a woman can do at a mine unless she’s a graduated mining engineer, and nothing then that a man couldn’t do better. You’ll be in the way and you’ll soon be bored to death yourself. If you’re so crazy about Montana why don’t you do some of those great things for her that your father suggested? And how do you reconcile your marriage to an Italian with your devotion to your father’s memory?” Ora turned away her head. “My father gave me too much of himself to expect me to play the rôle of ministering angel to anything. I intend to invest in Montana the greater part of all that I take out of my mine. If it gives me one of the great fortunes I shall endow my state in some way--as Mark may suggest. But I cannot live here. That is for ever settled. When I go to Europe I shall never return--not even to America. I shall forget my life here, everything connected with it--everything! One side of me is already European. I shall become wholly so.” “Somehow,” said Ida slowly, and with the sensation of being so close to something that she couldn’t see it, “I don’t get the idea that you’re so mad about Valdobia. Long since I figured that when you did love a man you’d be a sort of white pillar of flame about him. I firmly believe that Valdobia is the man for you, but, well--he fell too quickly. He didn’t make you suffer, never kept you guessing for a minute. The women that turn men’s heads are a good deal like men themselves; they’ve got to be hurt hard and kept on tenterhooks before they are in a condition to accommodate the virus. You are fond of Valdobia, and well you may be, but mad isn’t the right word----” “Oh, yes it is! It is!” Ora was walking up and down the room. “You must believe that I love him as I never dreamed I could love anybody----” “Hi!” cried Ida. “Your letter-man! That’s what! You were more nearly in love with him than you are with Valdobia, and because, for some reason or other, you couldn’t get him. Where is he?”