"I can wait," said Bartrow again; and his lack of curiosity drove her into the thick of it. "If you knew you'd want to do something,--as I do, only I don't know how. Isn't it pretty clear that Mr. Jeffard cares a great deal for Connie?" "Oh, I don't know about that. What makes you think so?" says the obvious one. "A good many little things; some word or two that Margaret has let slip, for one of them. How otherwise would you explain his eagerness to help Connie?" "On general principles, I guess. She's plenty good enough to warrant it." "Yes, but it wasn't 'general principles' in Mr. Jeffard's case. He is in love with Connie, and"-- "And she doesn't care for him. Is that it?" "No, it isn't it; she does care for him. I fairly shocked it out of her with the letter, and that is why I oughtn't to tell it, even to you. It is too pitiful!" Bartrow shook his head in cheerful density. "Your philosophy's too deep for me. If they are both of one mind, as you say, I don't see where the pity comes in. Jeffard isn't half good enough for her, of course; he made a bally idiot of himself a year ago. But if she can forget that, I'm sure we ought to." "I wasn't thinking of that. But don't you see how impossible this Midas tangle makes it? He won't take his third, you may be very sure of that; and when he finds out that Connie has a daughter's share in one of the other thirds, it will seal his lips for all time. People would say that he gave up his share only to marry hers." Bartrow got upon his feet and helped her to rise. "You'll take cold sitting out here in the ten-thousand-foot night," he said; and on the top step of the porch-flight she had his refutation of her latest assertion. "You say people would talk. Doesn't it strike you that Jeffard is the one man in a thousand who will mount and ride regardless?--who will smile and snap his fingers at public opinion? That's just what he's been doing all along, and he'll do it again if he feels like it. Let's go in and congratulate the good old uncle while we wait." CHAPTER XXXVI THE day train from the south ran into the early winter twilight at Acequia, and into the night at Littleton; and the arc stars of the city, resplendent with frosty aureoles, were brightly scintillant when Jeffard gave his hand-bag to the porter and passed out through the gate at the Union Depot. By telegraphic prearrangement, he was to meet Denby in Denver to make his report upon the Chihuahuan silver mine; but when he made inquiry at the hotel he was not sorry to find that the promoter had not yet arrived. It is a far cry from Santa Rosalia to Denver; as far as from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth; and he was grateful for a little breathing space in which to synchronize himself.