"God, girl, if you could only
realise how I love you. I can't tell you; I can't say things; but if you
could only realise!"
Passionate, throbbing, the girl's face lifted. Her great brown eyes,
sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes. Her lips parted.
"Say that again, How," she whispered, "only say that again. Tell me that
you love me. Tell me! tell me!"
CHAPTER XIV
FATE, THE SATIRIST
Four months drifted by. The will of Colonel William Landor had been read
and executed. According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth
of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were
left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to "an only
nephew, Clayton Craig by name." A second fraction of the great herd, a
tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once
"unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the
aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig." All of the estate
not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had
builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city
bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself
could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to "my
adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor." That was all. A single sheet of
greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned
laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but
incontrovertible in its laconic directness.
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