. W. all in one. And Dinky-Dunk
appeared in Lady Alicia's car, in _her_ car, carefully togged out in
his Sunday best, with that strangely alien aspect which citified
clothes can give to the rural toiler when he emerges from the costume
of his kind.

But it wasn't merely that he came arrayed in this outer shell of
affluence and prosperity. It was more that there was a sense of
triumph in his heart which he couldn't possibly conceal. And I wasn't
slow to realize what it meant. I was a down-and-outer now, and at his
mercy. He could have his way with me, without any promise of protest.
And whatever he might have done, or might yet do, it was ordained that
I in my meekness should bow to the yoke. All that I must remember was
that he stood my lord and master. I had made my foolish little
struggle to be mistress of my own destiny, and now that I had failed,
and failed utterly, I must bend to whatever might be given to me.

"It's hard luck, Chaddie," he said, with a pretense at being
sympathetic. But there was no real sorrow in his eye as he stood there
surveying my devastated ranch.

"Nix on that King Cophetua stuff!" I curtly and vulgarly proclaimed.

"Just what do you mean?" he asked, studying my face.

"Kindly can the condescension stuff!" I repeated, taking a wayward
satisfaction out of shocking him with the paraded vulgarity of my
phrasing.

"That doesn't sound like you," he said, naturally surprised, I
suppose, that I didn't melt into his arms.

"Why not?" I inquired, noticing that he no longer cared to meet my
eye.

"It sounds hard," he said.

"Well, some man has said that a hard soil makes a hard race," I
retorted, with a glance about at my ruined wheatlands. "Did you have a
pleasant time in Chicago?"

He looked up quickly.

"I wasn't in Chicago," he promptly protested.

"Then that woman lied, after all," I remarked, with a lump of Scotch
granite where my heart ought to have been. For I could see by his face
that he knew, without hesitation, the woman I meant.

"Isn't that an unnecessarily harsh word?" he asked, trying, of course,
to shield her to the last. And if he had not exactly winced, he had
done the next thing to it.

"What would _you_ call it?" I countered. It wouldn't have taken a
microphone, I suppose, to discover the hostility in my tone. "And
would it be going too far to inquire just where you were?" I continued
as I saw he had no intention of answering my first question.

"I was at the