"I do wish
I'd been presented at Court. Who is she? Oh, a cousin. I wonder you
can bear to look at her."
Without another word she burst into tears, heart-breaking sobs, the
more vehement because obviously she was trying to suppress them. I
stared at her, helpless with dismay, confronted for the first time
with an emergency which seemed to paralyse rather than stimulate
action. Had I sympathised, had I presented any aspect other than that
of the confounded idiot, she might have become hysterical. Without
doubt, my impassivity pulled her together. The sobs ceased, and she
said with a certain calmness--
"I couldn't help it. You and your brother have this splendid ranch;
you have experience, capital, everything looks so prosperous, and yet
you are going--_behind_. And if that is the case, what is to
become of us?"
"I dare say things will brighten up a bit."
"Brighten up?" She laughed derisively.
"That's the worst of it. The brightness is appalling. These hard, blue
skies without a cloud in them, this everlasting sunshine--how I loathe
it!"
Again I became tongue-tied.
"Jim thinks it _is_ Eden.
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