But half of the glamour of the evening before was
gone from her and she kept her eyes seriously lowered, frowning. In
fact, she had much to think about, for late the preceding evening Lew
Hervey had come to her and showed her the first note that her father
had written. She was not alarmed by this sudden trip over the
mountains. There had been so many vagaries in the actions of Oliver
Jordan in the past few months that this unannounced drive to an
undetermined destination was not particularly surprising. It was only
the delegation of such authority to Hervey that astonished her.
She forgot even Red Jim Perris and the lost Coles horses in her
abstraction, for whenever she looked down the table she saw nothing
saving the erect, burly form of the foreman, swelling, so it seemed to
her, with a newly acquired and aggressive importance. However, he had
the written word of her father, and she had to set her teeth over her
irritation and digest it as well as he could.
Hervey had presented reasonable excuses, to be sure. There was certain
work of fence-repairing, certain construction of sheds which he
had called to the attention of Oliver Jordan and which Jordan had
commissioned him to overlook during his absence.
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