The Last Woman

He turned to face her, meeting her stormy eyes laughingly; and exclaimed: "Gee! Miss Langdon, you sure do look as if you'd been having a run-in with the governor. I'd hate mightily to meet up with you, if I were alone and unprotected, and you were as plumb sore at me, as you are now at somebody you have just left inside that building. I sure would. Yes, indeed!"

He chuckled audibly as the car started forward toward Broadway. For a time, he gave his entire attention to the management of the car, purposely ignoring the young woman who was seated beside him, for notwithstanding the fact that he had chaffed her about the anger in her eyes, he was fully aware that she had met with an unpleasant experience of some sort, while he and the others were waiting outside the building.

The hiatus offered sufficient time for Miss Langdon entirely to recover her equanimity, and when at last Richard Morton's glance again sought her, he met the same cold, calm, unflinching gaze from her beautiful eyes that he had discovered there less than two weeks before, and, since, had never been able to forget for a single moment.

"Miss Langdon," he said, with his characteristic smile, "if you had been raised out west, in the country where I come from, you sure would have been bad medicine for anybody who tried your temper a little bit too far."

"What do you mean by that?" she asked him, quickly, but without offense. She was smiling now, and Morton's colloquialisms always interested her.

"Well, I mean a lot--and then some. If you'd been raised with a gun on your hip, and had been born a man instead of a woman, I reckon you'd have been an unsafe proposition to r'il. You certainly did look mad when you came out of that office-building; and the only regret I feel about it, is that I didn't stand within comfortable easy reach of the gazabo that made you feel like that. One of us would--have gone out through the window."

"It was my father," she said, simply, but smilingly.

"Oh! was it? Well, even so, I'm afraid I wouldn't be much of a respecter of persons, if you happened to be on the other side of the scales. I reckon your dad wouldn't look bigger than any other man. Have you forgotten what I said to you the second time I ever saw you?"

"No," she replied, gently, "I haven't forgotten it, and I never will forget it; but I must remind you of your promise to me, at that same meeting."