McDowell, and he ought to have known
what it would betray. There must have been other letters--men's
letters--for at mess there had been sly allusions to the fluctuations
of fortune, the comparative values of "straights" and "pats," and this
girl had turned and taunted him with the very words of that infernal,
and he had hoped, forgotten game. Moreover, she, a brilliant,
beautiful, practised woman of society, by no means the delicate and
sensitive little desert flower whose worship he had won so readily, had
dared to fence with him, had interested, piqued, fascinated, and now
wellnigh bewitched him. He was not yet well of his wounds by any manner
of means. He was still weak--far too weak to ride or climb or do much
in the way of walking, but he could look, and be most interesting
lolling in an invalid chair. Women had come and ministered to him in
his convalescence, and pretty Mrs. Dennis had made quite a fool of
herself, said certain elders, but when it came to cutting in for Evelyn
Darrah, Willett had had to be up and doing, even finally, for her and
her alone, as he murmured, daring to dance. There was nothing else he
did so supremely well, and men and women watched them enviously,
perhaps, yet delightedly, and men and women were watching now as he
followed her to her seat, dropped to the one beside her, and bent
absorbedly over her again, pale, agitated, and they saw her speaking,
saw him vehemently pleading, saw him prevailing, for his pallor and
emotion lent force to his impassioned words. Practised belle, coquette,
flirt she might have been, but the woman is rare indeed who can utterly
disbelieve, in face of such a combination, that she at least is loved.
Stella's impassioned letters once lay in unbroken packages upon his
mantel. Another star had risen and set, and sent its missives only to
the ashes of his grate, and now this very night, hidden in his desk,
lay long, close-written, criss-crossed, exquisite pages, the
outpourings of a young and guileless and glorious nature, and they,
too, lay, as did that early Stella's, unread, unheeded, almost
undesired, for the man was inflamed by this dauntless woman's defiance
of him, and the devil in him was urging: woo her, win her, conquer her,
_crush_ her, come what may!

That night was but one of several in quick succession. On every hand he
had to smile, and say conventional words of thanks for the pointed and
repeated congratulations showered upon him. Men and women