If the motherless girl could but have found a confidante on whom to pour out all the torturing doubts and longings of these days, something of her pain would have been surely assuaged. Chaotic new emotions were warring within her breast. Her wild young nature found itself incapable of wrestling with the exquisite impulses that despite her best efforts she could not control. Hilda told herself that she hated. An alarming voice seemed to retort from the depths of her heart that that was but another name for Love. This—Love! She could not—would not—dared not believe it. And yet the simple motion of this man’s strong white hand, the slight quizzical uplift of his eyes had the power to cause her to hold her breath suspended and send the blood racing to her heart.
Hilda was not subtle enough to search her soul or that of another. She could not diagnose that which overwhelmed her. In a way she was like one overtaken, trapped in a spell from which there was no door through which she might escape. She had reason for believing him to be unworthy—a man who put to a crucial test, had failed miserably; one who had confessed to a flagrant and criminal weakness.
She had judged him relentlessly, for youth is cruel, and love and jealousy create a torment which is hard to bear.
XXII
Duncan Mallison pushed the little swinging gate open with his knee and sauntering across to the City desk, threw a bundle down upon it.
“Why, hello, Dunc! Back?”
“Hi, there, Dunc!”
Several heads bent above typewriters raised long enough to call across a word of greeting. Charley Munns, City Editor of the Calgary Blizzard, his desk heaped high with an amazing mass of papers, glanced up with a detached query in his harassed young blue eyes.
“Well?”
Mallison proceeded to untie the string about his package. Munns glanced at the first of the pictures, jerked his chin out and looked again. Mallison showed the second and then, slowly, the third. Munns had pushed back the heap of papers. Pipe in hand, tired young blue eyes suddenly bright and alert, he examined the remarkable sketches. An interested group had gathered at the back of the city editor’s chair, and the sketches passed from hand to hand. Mallison who had, without words, merely laid the package of sketches before his city editor, continued reticent when questioned by the staff.
“Whose work was it? Where had he got them? Had they been exhibited? What were they doing in Calgary?” and so forth.
Oh, they were the work of a friend of his. Didn’t matter who. None of them knew his name. No, they hadn’t been exhibited.
Then he sat him down by the “Chief’s” desk, hugged his chin, and stared gloomily before him. The men were back at their desks, and Munns signed some slips, and then turned his attention back to his reporter.
“Good work. Typical Stoneys, eh? Don’t know who your friend is, Dunc, but it is worth two sticks—more if you’re personally interested. By the way, about P. D.? How’d you come out?”
The city editor had picked up again one of the sketches and was examining it interestedly. It was of a young girl, standing on the top of a hill, her horse, reins dropped, behind her, its mane blowing in the wind. She was in breeks, with a boy’s riding boots and her sweater was a bright scarlet. On her head was a black velvet tam. Something in the wide-eyed dreaming look of the girl, as if she were gazing across over an immense distance, seeing probably hills yet higher than the one on which she stood, with the clear blue skies as her only background, held the attention of the jaded city editor.
“That’s really great. Fine! Who’s the girl, by the way?”
“Hilda McPherson.”
“Oh ho!”
Mallison pulled out the slat of the desk, rested his elbows upon it, and began talking. As he talked, his city editor’s eyes returned time and again to the sketches, and suddenly he ejaculated:
“Hello! What’s this?”
Absently turning over the sketches, the photograph of Cheerio was suddenly revealed. Charley Munns’ brows were puckering. One other talent this man possessed. An almost uncanny gift of memory. It was said of him that he never forgot a face once seen.
“Half a mo’!”
He had swung around a rackety file, that revolved on low wheels. Digging into it, he presently found the “obit” that he sought, and slapped down upon the desk a pile of press clippings, duplicate of the photograph which the reporter had found at O Bar O, and a concise, itemised description of the man in question.
Editor and reporter scanned the story swiftly. There was no question now as to the identity of the man at O Bar O. Cheerio’s obit read like a romance. Son and heir of Lord Chelsmore, he had left his art studios in Italy to return to England, there to enlist as a common soldier in the ranks. Among those missing in France, posthumous honors had been bestowed upon him. Soon after this, his father had died, and his younger brother had succeeded to the title and estates and had married his former fiancée.
Charley Munns glanced through the various clippings, nodded his head, and slapped them back into the big manila envelope.
“I think you’ve stumbled across a big thing,” he said. “This man is probably the real Lord Chelsmore. Find out just what he’s doing up here. Not only a good news story here, but a fine feature story, if you want to do it.”
But the reporter was staring out angrily before him. Certain instincts were warring within him. He wanted to shove his knees under that typewriter desk and begin pounding
