It could not have been said of Daphne that her grief was without
self-consciousness. Still, much of her constraint and unevenness of manner
might have been set down to the circumstances of her present position. Why
she should have placed herself, or have allowed her friends to place her,
in an attitude of such unhappy publicity Thane had asked himself many
times, and the question angered him as often as it came up. He could only
refer it to the singularly unprogressive ideas of the Far West peculiar to
Far Eastern people. Apparently they had thought that, barring a friend or
two of Jack's, they would be as much alone with their tragic memories in
the capital city of Idaho as at this abandoned stage-station in the desert
where their pilgrimage had ended. They had not found it quite the same.
Daphne could, and probably did, read of herself in the "Silver Standard,"
Sunday edition, which treats of social events, heralded among the prominent
arrivals as "Jack Withers's maiden widow." This was a poetical flight of
the city reporter. Thane had smiled at the phrase, but that was before he
had seen Daphne; since then, whenever he thought of it, he pined for a
suitable occasion for punching the reporter's head.
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