She saw the riders disappear in the direction of the corrals and then
turned back towards the house. Unquestionably it was to avoid sight of
his men returning from their day's work that Oliver Jordan usually drove
off at this time of the day; it brought home to him too keenly the many
times when he himself had ridden back by the side of Lew Hervey from a
day of galloping in the wind; it crushed him with a sense of the
impotence into which his life had fallen. Indeed, unless some vital
change came, her father must soon mourn himself into a grave. For the
first time Marianne clearly perceived this. Oliver Jordan was wasting
for grief over his lost freedom just as some youthful lover might
decline because of the death of his mistress. The shock of this
perception brought Marianne to a halt. When she looked up Shorty and Red
Perris were not a hundred yards away, swinging along at a steady lope!
All sad thoughts were whisked from her mind as a gust whirls dead leaves
away and shows the green grass beneath, newly growing. How it lifted her
heart to see him. But she looked down, with a cold falling of gloom, at
her blue gingham dress. That was not as she wished to appear.
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