st felt a responsive sympathy; but her words, slow and hard, brought
her and Jared down to the bleakness of St. Ange again.

"You are wrong, terribly wrong. Mr. Gaston never wanted to marry me, and
I can take care of myself--I always have--taken care of myself!
Why--why, I'm engaged to Jude Lauzoon. I'm going to marry him right
away. We can't even wait for him to build a new shack. If a minister
doesn't happen this way, we're going over to Hillcrest. Oh, what a joke
we've played on you!"

Jared stared idiotically, and Joyce's laugh rang wildly out.

"Mr. Gaston and me! What an idea! Why, he's helping us"--the
inspiration to say this came from a blind belief in Gaston's quick
adaptability--"he's helping me and Jude--to what we want."

"The devil he is!" It was all that Jared could clutch from the rout.
"I--I believe it's a thundering lie," he added as an after-thought, and
as a cover to his retreat.

"It's no lie." Joyce had regained her calmness. She was panting, but she
had reached safety and she knew it. An unlovely, unhallowed safety, but
such as it was it was her salvation and Gaston's.

When she had stolen to him the night before it was her last ignorant
impulse to gain her own ends. From now on she must be on guard, or her
world would come clattering about her heart and soul. It took Jared some
minutes to digest the information that had been flung at him so
unexpectedly, and then anger and baffled hope swayed him. Joyce married
to Jude would make _his_, Jared's, future no securer than it now was.
Indeed it might complicate matters, for Jared had no belief in Jude
rising above the dead level of St. Ange standards.

"You're a durn fool!" he ejaculated at last, while the new impression of
his daughter's beauty stirred him painfully. "You are a durn fool to
fling yourself away on Jude when you might have done most anything with
yourself--if you was managed right."

Then in an evil moment Joyce laughed. Her lips parted in an odd little
way they had showing the small white teeth and forming the dimples in
cheeks and chin. So great was the girl's relief; so appalled was she at
what might have been, that the conflict of emotions made her almost
hysterical.

"Daddy," she said, between ripples of laughter, "you thought you had me
then, didn't you? But being your daughter, you know, I had wit enough to
take care of myself."

Jared listened to this outburst in sheer amazement. Unable to
understand, in the least, w