came to him
through the light filtered air.
"Laska!"
young woman on horseback was before him. Her pony stood across the road,
and she looked up a trail which ran down into it. The lifted poise of the
head brought out its fine lines and the distinction with which it was set
upon the well-molded throat column. Apparently she was calling to some
companion on the trail who had not yet emerged into view.
At sound of his footsteps the rider's head turned.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Hobart," she said quietly, as coolly as if her heart
had not suddenly begun to beat strangely fast.
"Good afternoon, Miss Balfour."
Each of them was acutely conscious of the barrier between them. Since the
day when she had told him of her engagement they had not met, even
casually, and this their first sight of each other was not without
embarrassment.
"We have been to Lone Pine Cone," she said rather hurriedly, to bridge an
impending silence.
He met this obvious statement with another as brilliant.
"I walked out from town. My horse is a little lame."
But there was something she wanted to say to him, and the time for saying
it, before the arrival of her companion, was short.
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