SON OF THE WIND
turn on her, but she held out the gold piece slowly and let it fall into the other man's hand.
The man on the road seemed submerged from thought by some crushing emotion. Expression was washed out of his face; he was nerveless; his throat made a convulsive movement—an attempt for speech; his hand closed on the money, and with a jerk plunged it into his pocket. "I—" he began, but there his tongue stopped; his head drooped, and he turned away. He moved on up the drive, leading his horse as if he had not ambition enough to mount it, and left a quality of silence behind him that was astonishment. "What in the world?" Blanche Rader seemed not to ask of Carron so much as herself. "What in the world is the matter with him?"
Carron's eyes were twinkling. "Probably thought you were going to withhold his proper due."
"But it doesn't seem as if it could be his!"
"Oh, why not?"
She looked at him with smiling scorn, very pretty upon such a tender mouth. "Where would he get it—twenty dollars!"
"He sold a horse," Carron said. He said it to amuse himself. It fitted so nicely into an outward lie and an inward truth; but the expression it summoned in her was amazing—the sudden proud suspicious look her eyes darted, the rush of a red spot
80
