“You thought you would be charitable to the daughter,” she finished for him, with a smile in which there was gratitude and understanding. “I am sure I can’t thank you enough for feeling that way toward my father and myself. But I can’t accept, you know.” Taylor did know, of course. A desperate desire to make amends for his lying, to force upon her gratuitously what he had illegally robbed her of, had been the motive underlying his offer. And he would have been disappointed had she accepted, for that would have revealed a lack of spirit which he had hoped she possessed. And yet Taylor felt decidedly uncomfortable over the refusal. He wanted her to have what belonged to her, for he divined from the note her father had left that she would have need of it. He discovered by judicious questioning, by inference, and through crafty suggestion, that she was entirely dependent upon her uncle; that her uncle had bought the Huggins house, and that Carrington had made her a present of the horse she rode. This last bit of information, volunteered by Marion, provoked Taylor to a rage that made him grit his teeth. A little while longer they talked, and when the girl mounted her horse to ride away, they had entered into an agreement under which on Tuesdays and Fridays—the first Tuesday falling on the following day—Taylor was to be absent from the ranch. And during his absence the girl was to come and stay at the ranchhouse, there to occupy her father’s room and, if she desired, to enter the other rooms at will. As a concession to propriety, she was to bring Martha, the Huggins housekeeper, with her. But Taylor, after the girl had left, stood for an hour on the porch, watching the dust-cloud that followed the girl’s progress through the big basin, his face red, his soul filled with loathing for the part his judgment was forcing him to play. But arrayed against the loathing was a complacent satisfaction aroused over the thought that Carrington would never get the money that Larry Harlan had left to the girl. CHAPTER X—THE FRAME-UP James J. Carrington was unscrupulous, but even his most devout enemy could not have said that he lacked vision and thoroughness. And, while he had been listening to Danforth in his apartment in the Castle Hotel, he had discovered that Neil Norton had made a technical blunder in electing Quinton Taylor mayor of Dawes. Perhaps that was why Carrington had not seemed to be very greatly disturbed over the knowledge that Danforth had been defeated; certainly it was why Carrington had taken the first train to the capital. Carrington was tingling with elation when he reached the capital; but on making inquiries he found that the governor had left the city the day before, and that he was not expected to return for several days. Carrington passed the interval renewing some acquaintances, and fuming with impatience in the barroom, the billiard-room, and the lobby of his hotel.