“I certainly didn’t mean it that way. I had no right to ask you to do anything about it.” “Mebbe it was the facts put it up to me. Anyhow, I felt responsible.” “Mr. Roper once told me that you always feel responsible when you hear anybody is in trouble,” the young woman answered. “Roper’s a goat. Nobody ever pays any attention to him.” Presently they diverged from the road and sat down on a great flat rock which dropped out from the hillside like a park seat. For he was still far from strong and needed frequent rests. Their talk was desultory, for they had reached that stage of friendship at which it is not necessary to bridge silence with idle small talk. Here, by some whim of fate, the word was spoken. He knew he loved her, but he had not meant to say it yet. But when her steady gray eyes came back to his after a long stillness, the meeting brought him a strange feeling that forced his hand. “I love you, Laska. Will you be my wife?” he asked quietly. “Yes, Sam,” she answered directly. That was all. It was settled with a word. There in the sunshine he kissed her and sealed the compact, and afterward, when the sun was low among the hill spurs, they went back happily to take up again the work that awaited them. CHAPTER XXV. FRIENDLY ENEMIES Ridgway had promised Aline that he would see her soon, and when he found himself in New York he called at the big house on Fifth Avenue, which had for so long been identified as the home of Simon Harley. It bore his impress stamped on it. Its austerity suggested the Puritan rather than the classic conception of simplicity. The immense rooms were as chill as dungeons, and the forlorn little figure in black, lost in the loneliness of their bleakness, wandered to and fro among her retinue of servants like a butterfly beating its wings against a pane of glass. With both hands extended she ran forward to meet her guest. “I’m so glad, so glad, so glad to see you.” The joy-note in her voice was irrepressible. She had been alone for weeks with the conventional gloom that made an obsession of the shadow of death which enveloped the house. All voices and footsteps had been subdued to harmonize with the grief of the mistress of this mausoleum. Now she heard the sharp tread of this man unafraid, and saw the alert vitality of his confident bearing. It was like a breath of the hills to a parched traveler. “I told you I would come.” “Yes. I’ve been looking for you every day. I’ve checked each one off on my calendar. It’s been three weeks and five days since I saw you.” “I thought it was a year,” he laughed, and the sound of his uncurbed voice rang strangely in this room given to murmurs. “Tell me about everything. How is Virginia, and Mrs. Mott, and Mr. Yesler? And is he really engaged to that sweet little school-teacher? And how does Mr. Hobart like being senator?” “Not more than a dozen questions permitted at a time. Begin again, please.” “First, then, when did you reach the city?”