Then as gloom descended on me with my uttered thought, my heart smote me
at Sally's broken: "Oh, Russ! No! No!" Diane Sampson bent dark, shocked
eyes upon the hill and ranch in front of her; but they were sightless,
they looked into space and eternity, and in them I read the truth
suddenly and cruelly revealed to her--she loved Steele!

I found it impossible to leave Miss Sampson with the impression I had
given. My own mood fitted a kind of ruthless pleasure in seeing her
suffer through love as I had intimation I was to suffer.

But now, when my strange desire that she should love Steele had its
fulfilment, and my fiendish subtleties to that end had been crowned with
success, I was confounded in pity and the enormity of my crime. For it
had been a crime to make, or help to make, this noble and beautiful
woman love a Ranger, the enemy of her father, and surely the author of
her coming misery. I felt shocked at my work. I tried to hang an excuse
on my old motive that through her love we might all be saved. When it
was too late, however, I found that this motive was wrong and perhaps
without warrant.

We rode home in silence. Miss Sampson, contrary to her usual custom of
riding to the corrals or the porch, dismounted at a path leading in
among the trees and flowers. "I want to rest, to think before I go in,"
she said.

Sally accompanied me to the corrals. As our horses stopped at the gate I
turned to find confirmation of my fears in Sally's wet eyes.

"Russ," she said, "it's worse than we thought."