During all the past weeks, Marylyn had carefully harboured her fancies about Lounsbury. Certain of the calico-covered books on the mantel had no little part in this. Their stories of undying affection--of bold men, lorn maidens, and the cruel villains who gloried in severing them--helped her to fit her little circle into proper roles. She loved, and must crush out her passion. Lounsbury, whom she loved, had been sent away by her father. And she lived up to the play consistently. She saw the storekeeper anguished over his banishment; saw depths of meaning in the good-natured salutes he gave the shack. With herself, she accepted loneliness as a sign of deeper suffering. She was tortured by self-pity, by the doubt she had flung at Dallas, by the firm belief that her heart was hopelessly fettered. Gazing into a piece of looking-glass that served her for a mirror, she marked with sorrowful pride her transparent skin and lustreless eye. She sighed as she watched from the windows. Patiently, she listened for footsteps, her face half turned to the door. And yet what she took so tragically was nothing but failing health. What was not a fact the night of her admission to Dallas, was almost come to pass. The few days of great cold and hunger in February, coupled with long confinement in the dirt-floored house, were having their effect. She was on the verge of illness. Lancaster, whenever he noticed her dejection, was inclined to pooh-pooh it. "She looks as ef she'd jes' been slapped," he declared, "an' is expectin' another lammin' any minnit. Ef she'd cry, she'd shore weep lemon-juice." Again, he reckoned that she had picked up "some notion." Jealous and suspicious as he was, however, he got no nearer to the truth. But Dallas--she was misled far more than either Marylyn or their father. She fought away from the idea that her sister might be breaking physically, and tenderly as a mother yearned over her. Anxious-eyed, she noted the pallor of the childlike face, the melancholy expression that had come to be habitual. She fretted over the spareness of the younger girl, who ate only when she was urged. If, sated with sleep, Marylyn moved in the night, Dallas aroused on the instant and hovered beside her. At last, thoroughly alarmed, the elder girl determined to follow out the idea that had occurred to her in mid-winter. What did it matter how hard and hateful the duty would be? What did her own hidden feelings matter? She would appeal to Lounsbury in her sister's behalf. But time passed without bringing her the opportunity, and it was borne in upon her finally that Lounsbury meant to remain away, perhaps until he was bidden to come. Undaunted, she made plans to waylay him on the coulee road. Resting the Sharps across her arm, she set out, morning or afternoon, on a long jaunt.