s of his coarse
blankets she lay on her dainty bed with clenched hands and sleepless
eyes, trying to pierce the gloomy veil of futurity and tearfully
striving to reconcile a great misery with a greater joy.

"I love him! I love him!" she moaned passionately, "and if it were not
for that milk-and-water baby he would love me with all the savage
strength and intensity of his fierce nature. Oh! my Wolf, my strong,
wild Wolf! What can that vapid ninny offer you in comparison to what I
would give?"

She sat up erect, her eyes blazing in the darkness like those of a
hunted wild beast.

"She shall not--I swear it! Home, station, wealth, honor, body and
soul--I will sacrifice all! He is mine! mine! mine!" After awhile, in
sheer exhaustion of passion, she fell into a troubled sleep.

The next day he obtained leave of absence for a fortnight's inspection
of his mines. En route he mailed several letters entrusted by Mrs.
Brevoort, one of which was addressed to a woman in New York. She was one
of those inveterate gossips of high station who act as purveyors of
"exclusive information" to the society editors of the great fashionable
journals.

Some days later he stopped at Tin Cup for the ranch mail; it included a
rather short and unsatisfactory note from Grace, written hurriedly in
transit, announcing her party's embarkation on Lord Ellerslie's yacht
for a cruise on the Mediterranean. The girl was really homesick in
truth, but relying too implicitly on Love's divination had omitted to
make that fact clear, ending her missive with the ambiguous sentence: "I
wish we had never left home. I am so unhappy." It was the first
communication he had received from her for over six weeks. He did not
know that her customary budget, a sort of daily diary mailed once a
month, had gone down with the fated _Peruvia_ in mid-ocean, and he was
uneasy and resentful.

Mrs. Brevoort was out riding when he reached the ranch, so he merely
instructed 'Rastus to inform her of his return, and dined at the common
mess house. In the interim of waiting he glanced casually over the
contents of the New York papers which he had received in the mail.

Unto Constance Brevoort, awaiting him with a great trepidation in the
little den, came a white-lipped, stern-faced man with a paper crushed In
his hand.

"Read that!" he said curtly, pointing to a paragraph at the head of the
"Society Column." She caught her breath sharply but with no other
visible evidence of