It was late at night, and Miss Schuyler, sitting alone in Hetty's room, found the time pass very heavily. She had raised her voice in warning when the cow-boys mounted the night Grant had ridden away with Hetty, and had seen the fugitives vanish into the darkness, but since then she had had no news of them, for while Breckenridge had arrived at Cedar the next day, in custody of two mounted men, nobody would tell him what had really happened. Her first impulse had been to ask for an escort to the depot and take the cars for New York, but she was intensely anxious to discover whether Hetty had evaded pursuit, and her pride forbade her slipping away without announcing her intention to Torrance, who had not yet come back to the Range. She felt that something was due to him, especially as she had not regained the house unnoticed when the pursuit commenced. Rising, she moved restlessly up and down the room; but that in no way lessened the suspense, and sitting down again she resolutely took up a book, but she listened instead of reading it. There was, however, no sound from the prairie, and the house seemed exasperatingly still. "You will have to shake this nervousness off or you will make a fool of yourself before that man," she muttered. She felt that she had sat there a very long while, though the clock showed that scarcely an hour had passed, when at last there was a rattle of wheels and a trampling of hoofs outside. The great door opened, and after that there was an apparently interminable silence, until Hetty's maid came in. "If it is convenient, Mr. Torrance would like to speak to you," she said. Flora Schuyler rose and followed the girl down the corridor; but her heart beat faster than usual when the door of Torrance's room closed behind her. The stove was no longer lighted, and Torrance stood beside the hearth, which was littered with half-consumed papers, and Miss Schuyler, who knew his precision in dress, noticed that he still wore the bespattered garments he had ridden in. But it was the grimness of his face, and the weariness in his pose, which seized her attention and aroused a curious sympathy for him. He glanced at her sharply, with stern, dark eyes. "I have to thank you for coming, but I am going to talk plainly," he said. "You connived at the meetings between my daughter and the rascally adventurer who has married her?" "They are married?" exclaimed Miss Schuyler in her eagerness, and the next moment felt the blood rise to her face as she realized that she had blundered in admitting any doubt upon the subject. "I mean, of course, that I wondered whether Mr. Grant could have arranged it so soon." "You seem to attach a good deal of importance to the ceremony," Torrance said, with a bitter smile. "Marriage is quite easy in this country."