Had it been his love for her, or the army service, or the war in France, or the struggle for life and health afterwards?
Or had it been this rugged, uncouth West?
Carley felt insidious jealousy of this last possibility.

She feared this West.

She was going to hate it.
She had womanly intuition enough to see in Flo Hutter a girl somehow to be reckoned with.

Still, Carley would not acknowledge to herself that his simple, unsophisticated Western girl could possibly be a rival.
Carley did not need to consider the fact that she had been spoiled by the attention of men.

It was not her vanity that precluded Flo Hutter as a rival.
Gradually the conversation drew to a lapse, and it suited Carley to let it be so.