She waved his argument aside. "Stupid boy! I have dresses enough to last me for five years--if you'll let me be that poor man's wife. I can make them over myself later and still be the best dressed woman in camp."
From above came Captain Kilmeny's shout. "We telephoned down. The engineer has the trouble arranged."
"When shall I see you alone again, Moya?" Jack demanded.
"I'm going to see you. We've got to fight this out. I'll not let Lady Farquhar keep me from seeing you alone. It's serious business."
"Yes," she admitted. "I'll tell Lady Jim. But ... there's no use in letting you think I'll give up. I can't."
"You've got to give up. That's all there is to it." His jaw was set like a vise.
The party above fell upon them as they landed.
"Were you frightened, Moya?" exclaimed Joyce above the chorus of questions.
"Just for a moment." Moya did not look at Jack. "Mr. Kilmeny told me it would be all right."
Jack's eyes danced. "I told her we would work out of the difficulty if she would trust me."
Moya blushed. It happened that Captain Kilmeny was looking directly at her when his cousin spoke.
Jack Kilmeny had not been brought up in the dry sunbaked West for nothing. The winds of the Rockies had entered into his character as well as into his physique. He was a willful man, with a good deal of granite in his make-up. A fighter from his youth, he did not find it easy to yield the point upon which he differed from Moya. There was in her so much of impulsive generosity that he had expected to overpower her scruples. But she stood like a rock planted in the soil.
It came to him as he walked home after a long fight with her that in his heart he did not want her to yield. She was the Moya Dwight he loved because she would not compromise with her conviction. Yet, though he wanted her to stand firm, he hated the thought of giving way himself. It galled his pride that he must come to her without a penny, knowing that she had the means to keep them both modestly. Nor could he, without a pang, think of surrendering the twenty-eight thousand dollars he had fought for and won. He was no visionary. The value of money he understood perfectly. It stood for power, place, honor, the things that were worth having. Given what he had, Jack knew he could double it in Goldbanks within the year. There were legitimate opportunities for investment that were bound to make rich returns. But without a dollar he would be like Samson shorn of his locks.