he wants the ranch is that he wants to turn it over to me. I am, and have been, in this plot from the beginning; and that is why I have been learning the ranch business. Incidentally I have been spying on conditions. Does that state the case?"
It did state exactly Daphne's belief and the cause of her anger. There was no reason why her sense of the rectitude of her position should weaken or her indignation abate. Yet, illogically, both of these things were happening. Somehow she actually began to feel on the defensive! That was unthinkable.
"Perfectly! " she answered, her spirit returning at the thought.
"Leaving my father out of it for the moment. Why have you thought I would be party to such a scheme—if there was such a scheme? Is that the opinion you have formed of me in the four or five years we have been together? Answer me, I want to know."
"N-no," hesitated Daphne. This was getting on the defensive with a vengeance.
"What was it then?"
"I heard with my own ears this Bates person tell the Colonel that that was why your father wanted it. And you told me yourself right here in this very spot that some day you would get this ranch. Don't tell me you don't remember!"
Kenneth puzzled over this statement with exasperating deliberation.
"Oh, I see," he observed at last. "I think I've got it." He looked straight at her, and the hard square lines of his face had softened and a quizzical gleam had come into his eyes. And somehow, whether it was that Kenneth's manner had an effect, that her own emotion had exhausted itself by its intensity, that the reaction from the past weeks had flung her back, or more subtly that again Dolman the wise exerted his mysterious influence; the fact remained that suddenly Daphne knew without the justification of words and arguments that it was all right.
"Daffy," said Kenneth, deliberately, "you're a goose!"
"A-am I?" she faltered.
The next instant she was shaking with sobs, tight folded in his arms, her face buried against his arm. After a few moments he raised her head and kissed her. She clung to him the harder.
