He reached out and pinched her cheek, smiled and shook his head with mock seriousness.
"Lordy, Sister, you'd make me out a hell-winder of a bad man, wouldn't you?"
"Not much! 'N awful good man, Bruce. That's what puts a crimp in 'em--your goodness!"
"Tryin' to josh me now, ain't you?" he laughed. "Well, josh away, but if any of 'em get fresh with you an' I'll ... I'll have th' sheriff on 'em!"--with a twinkle in his gray eyes. Then he sobered.
"I s'pose I'd better go up to her room now," he said, an uneasy manner coming over him. "She'll be glad to know he's gettin' along so well....
"So everybody thinks she's his sister, do they?"--with an effort to make his question sound casual and as an afterthought.
"Yes, they do. I'm th' only one who's guessed she's his wife an' I kept my mouth shut. Rest of 'em all swear she couldn't be, that's she's his sister, 'cause she ... well, she ain't th' kind that would marry a thing like that. I didn't say nothin'. I let 'em think as they do; but I know! No sister would worry th' way she does!"
"You're a wise gal," he said, "an' when you said she was th' sweetest thing that ever come to this town you wasn't so awful wrong."
He opened the door and closed it behind him.
In the middle of the kitchen floor the girl stood alone, motionless, her eyes glowing, pulses quickened. Then, the keen light went from her face; its expression became doggedly patient, as if she were confronted by a long, almost hopeless undertaking, and with a sigh she turned to her tasks.
Patient Nora! As Bayard had closed the door behind him unthinkingly, so had he closed the door to his heart against the girl. All her crude, timid advances had failed to impress him, so detached from response to sex attraction was his interest in her. And for months she had waited ... waited, finding solace in the fact that no other woman stood closer to him; but now ... she feared an unnamed influence.
Ann Lytton, staring at the page of a book, heard his boots on the stair. He mounted slowly, spurs ringing lightly with each step, and, when he was halfway up, she rose to her feet, walked to the door of her room and stood watching him come down the narrow, dark hallway, filling it with his splendid height, his unusual breadth.