He had known her
daughter very much better than her words to Larry the previous evening
had indicated. Not only had Joe known her while a girl down here, but
much later he had learned in what convent she was going to school and
there had been surreptitious love-making despite convent rules and
boundaries--till the Duchess had learned what was going on. She had
had a square out-and-out talk with Joe; the romance had suddenly
ended; and later Larry's mother had married elsewhere. But the
snuffed-out romance had made no difference in the friendship between
the Duchess and Joe; each had recognized the other as square, as that
word was understood in their border world.
To Joe Ellison the Duchess was changed but little since twenty-odd
years ago. She had seemed old even then; though as a youth he had
known old men who had talked of her beauty when a young woman and of
how she had queened it among the reckless spirits of that far time.
But to the Duchess the change in Joe Ellison was astounding. She had
last seen him in his middle thirties: black-haired, handsome, careful
of dress, powerful of physique, dominant, fiery-tempered, fearless of
any living thing, but with these hot qualities checked into a surface
appearance of unruffled equanimity by his self-control and his
habitual reticence.
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