With the patience and gentleness of a confessor John Cardigan heard
the story now, and though Bryce gave no hint in words that his
affections were involved in the fight for the Cardigan acres, yet did
his father know It, for he was a parent. And his great heart went out
in sympathy for his boy.
"I understand, sonny, I understand. This young lady is only one
additional reason why you must win, for of course you understand she
is not indifferent to you."
"I do not know that she feels for me anything stronger than a vagrant
sympathy, Dad, for while she is eternally feminine, nevertheless she
has a masculine way of looking at many things. She is a good comrade
with a bully sense of sportsmanship, and unlike her skunk of an
uncle, she fights in the open. Under the circumstances, however, her
first loyalty is to him; in fact, she owes none to me. And I dare say
he has given her some extremely plausible reason why we should be
eliminated; while I think she is sorry that it must be done,
nevertheless, in a mistaken impulse of self-protection she is likely
to let him do it."
"Perhaps, perhaps. One never knows why a woman does things, although
it is a safe bet that if they're with you at all, they're with you
all the way. Eliminate the girl, my boy. She's trying to play fair to
you and her relative.
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