"Back already?" she asked. "Surely, you've not been to Stockchute--Yes, you have!" Her experienced eye was taking in every indication of his horse's condition. "He's been traveling; but you've handled him well."
"He's grand!" said Ashton. "Been putting him through his paces. I suppose he is your father's best mount."
"Daddy and Kid ride him when they're in a hurry or there's no other horse handy."
"You can't mean--? Then perhaps I can have him again occasionally."
"All he needs is a little management," replied Ashton, again patting the horse's lean neck.
"If you wish to take him in hand, I'll assign him to you. No one else wants him."
"As your rural deliveryman's mount--" began Ashton. He stopped to show the bulging bag slung under his arm. "Here's the mail. Do you wish your letters now?"
"Here is this, however," he said, handing her a folded slip of paper.
She opened it and looked at the writing inside. It was a receipt from the postmaster at Stockchute to Lafayette Ashton for certain letters delivered for mailing. The address of the letter to Thomas Blake was given in full. The girl colored, bit her lip, and murmured contritely: "You have turned the tables on me. I deserved it!"
"Please don't take it that way!" he begged. "My purpose was merely to assure you the letter was mailed. After all, I am a stranger, Miss Knowles."
"It's very kind of you to say it! Yet it's just as well for me to start off with no doubts in your mind, in view of the fact that in two or three weeks--"
"I--Your father will hardly keep me more than two weeks, unless--unless I make good," he answered.
"I guess you needn't worry about that," she replied, somewhat ambiguously.
He shrugged. "It is very good of you to say it, Miss Knowles. I know I shall fail. Can you expect anyone who has always lived within touch of millions, one who has spent more in four years at college than all this range is worth--He cut my allowance repeatedly, until it was only a beggarly twenty-five thousand."
"Twenty-five thousand dollars!" exclaimed Isobel. "You had all that to--to throw away in a single year?"
"He cut me down to it the last year--a mere bagatelle to what I had all the time I was at college and Tech.," replied Ashton, his eyes sparkling at the recollection. "He wished me to get in thick with the New Yorkers, the sons of the Wall Street leaders. He gave me leave to draw on him without limit. I did what he wished me to do,--I got in with the most exclusive set. Ah-h!--the way I made the dollars fly! Before I graduated I was the acknowledged leader. What's more, I led my class, too--when I chose."