Her relatives and friends, and later a horde of Mormon and
Gentile suitors, had fanned the flame of natural vanity in her.
So that at twenty-eight she scarcely thought at all of her
wonderful influence for good in the little community where her
father had left her practically its beneficent landlord, but
cared most for the dream and the assurance and the allurement of
her beauty. This time, however, she gazed into her glass with
more than the usual happy motive, without the usual slight
conscious smile. For she was thinking of more than the desire to
be fair in her own eyes, in those of her friend; she wondered if
she were to seem fair in the eyes of this Lassiter, this man
whose name had crossed the long, wild brakes of stone and plains
of sage, this gentle-voiced, sad-faced man who was a hater and a
killer of Mormons. It was not now her usual half-conscious vain
obsession that actuated her as she hurriedly changed her
riding-dress to one of white, and then looked long at the stately
form with its gracious contours, at the fair face with its strong
chin and full firm lips, at the dark-blue, proud, and passionate
eyes.
"If by some means I can keep him here a few days, a week--he will
never kill another Mormon," she mused. "Lassiter!...I shudder
when I think of that name, of him. But when I look at the man I
forget who he is--I almost like him. I remember only that he
saved Bern.
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