“And you don't stop it?”
“My dear Vance, how little you know Terence! You couldn't tear that horse out of his life without breaking his heart. I
“So you suffer, day by day?”
“I've done very little else all my life,” said Elizabeth gravely. “And I've learned to bear pain.”
He swallowed. Also, he was beginning to grow irritated. He had never before had a talk with Elizabeth that contained so many reefs that threatened shipwreck. He returned to the gist of their conversation rather too bluntly.
“But to continue, Elizabeth, any banker would lend me money on my prospects.”
“You mean the property which will come to you when I die?”
He used all his power, but he could not meet her glance. “You know that's a nasty way to put it, Elizabeth.”
“Dear Vance,” she sighed, “a great many people say that I'm a hard woman. I suppose I am. And I like to look facts squarely in the face. Your prospects begin with my death, of course.”
He had no answer, but bit his lip nervously and wished the ordeal would come to an end.
“Vance,” she went on, “I'm glad to have this talk with you. It's something you have to know. Of course I'll see that during my life or my death you'll be provided for. But as for your main prospects, do you know where they are?”
“Well?”
She was needlessly brutal about it, but as she had told him, her education had been one of pain.
“Your prospects are down there by the river on the back of Le Sangre.”
Vance Cornish gasped.
“I'll show you what I mean, Vance. Come along.”
The moment she rose, some of her age fell from her. Her carriage was erect. Her step was still full of spring and decision, as she led the way into the house. It was a big, solid, two-story building which the mightiest wind could not shake. Henry Cornish had merely founded the house, just as he had founded the ranch; the main portion of the work had been done by his daughter. And as they passed through, her stern old eye rested peacefully on the deep, shadowy vistas, and her foot fell with just pride on the splendid rising sweep of the staircase. They passed into the roomy vault of the upper hall and went down to the end. She took out a big key from her pocket and fitted it into the lock; then Vance dropped his hand on her arm. His voice lowered.
“You've made a mistake, Elizabeth. This is Father's room.”
Ever since his death it had been kept unchanged, and practically unentered save for an occasional rare day of work to keep it in order. Now she nodded and resolutely turned the key and swung the door open. Vance went in with an exclamation of wonder. It was quite changed from the solemn old room and the brown, varnished woodwork which he remembered. Cream-tinted paint now made the walls cool and fresh. The solemn engravings no longer hung above the bookcases. And the bookcases themselves had been replaced with built-in shelves pleasantly filled with rich bindings, black and red and deep yellow-browns. A tall cabinet stood open at one side filled with rifles and shotguns of every description, and another cabinet was loaded with fishing apparatus. The stiff-backed chairs had given place to comfortable monsters of easy lines. Vance Cornish, as one in a dream, peered here and there.
“God bless us!” he kept repeating. “God bless us! But where's there a trace of Father?”
“I left it out,” said Elizabeth huskily, “because this room is meant for—but let's go back. Do you remember that day twenty-four years ago when we took Jack Hollis's baby?”
“When
“Thank you,” she answered proudly. “At any rate, I took the boy and called him Terence Colby.”
“Why that name,” muttered Vance, “I never could understand.”
“Haven't I told you? No, and I hardly know whether to trust even you with the secret, Vance. But you remember we argued about it, and you said that blood would out; that the boy would turn out wrong; that before he was twenty-five he would have shot a man?”
“I believe the talk ran like that.”
“Well, Vance, I started out with a theory; but the moment I had that baby in my arms, it became a matter of theory, plus, and chiefly plus. I kept remembering what you had said, and I was afraid. That was why I worked up the Colby idea.”
“That's easy to see.”
“It wasn't so easy to do. But I heard of the last of an old Virginia family who had died of consumption in Arizona. I traced his family. He was the last of it. Then it was easy to arrange a little story: Terence Colby had married a girl in Arizona, died shortly after; the girl died also, and I took the baby. Nobody can disprove what I say. There's not a living soul who knows that Terence is the son of Jack Hollis—except you and me.”
“How about the woman I got the baby from?”
“I bought her silence until fifteen years ago. Then she died, and now Terry is convinced that he is the last representative of the Colby family.”
She laughed with excitement and beckoned him out of the room and into another—Terry's room, farther down the hall. She pointed to a large photograph of a solemn-faced man on the wall. “You see that?”
“Who is it?”
“I got it when I took Terry to Virginia last winter—to see the old family estate and go over the ground of the historic Colbys.”
