A First Family of Tasajara by Bret Harte (page 3)

be able to give me the pleasure of your company, with whatever they may give us here in the way of refreshment.”

“I shall be very happy,” returned John Milton with unmistakable candor; “but perhaps some of your friends will be arriving in quest of you, if they are not already here.”

“Then they will join us or wait,” said Mrs. Ashwood incisively, with her first exhibition of the imperiousness of a rich and pretty woman. Perhaps she was a little annoyed that her elaborate introduction of herself had produced no reciprocal disclosure by her companion. “Will you please send the landlord to me?” she added.

John Milton disappeared in the hotel as she cantered to the porch. In another moment she was giving the landlord her orders with the easy confidence of one who knew herself only as an always welcome and highly privileged guest, which was not without its effect. “And,” she added carelessly, “when everything is ready you will please tell–Mr.”–

“Harcourt,” suggested the landlord promptly.

Mrs. Ashwood’s perfectly trained face gave not the slightest sign of the surprise that had overtaken her. “Of course,–Mr. Harcourt.”

“You know he’s the son of the millionaire,” continued the landlord, not at all unwilling to display the importance of the habitues of Crystal Spring, “though they’ve quarreled and don’t get on together.”

“I know,” said the lady languidly, “and, if any one comes here for ME, ask them to wait in the parlor until I come.”

Then, submitting herself and her dusty habit to the awkward ministration of the Irish chambermaid, she was quite thrilled with a delightful curiosity. She vaguely remembered that she had heard something of the Harcourt family discord,–but that was the divorced daughter surely! And this young man was Harcourt’s son, and they had quarreled! A quarrel with a frank, open, ingenuous fellow like that–a mere boy–could only be the father’s fault. Luckily she had never mentioned the name of Harcourt! She would not now; he need not know that it was his father who had originated the party; why should she make him uncomfortable for the few moments they were together?

There was nothing of this in her face as she descended and joined him. He thought that face handsome, well-bred, and refined. But this breeding and refinement seemed to him–in his ignorance of the world, possibly–as only a graceful concealment of a self of which he knew nothing; and he was not surprised to find that her pretty gray eyes, now no longer hidden by her veil, really told him no more than her lips. He was a little afraid of her, and now that she had lost her naive enthusiasm he was conscious of a vague remorsefulness for his interrupted work in the forest. What was he doing here? He who had avoided the cruel, selfish world of wealth and pleasure,–a world that this woman represented,–the world that had stood apart from him in the one dream of his life–and had let Loo die! His quickly responsive face darkened.

“I am afraid I really interrupted you up there,” she said gently, looking in his face with an expression of unfeigned concern; “you were at work of some kind, I know, and I have very selfishly thought only of myself. But the whole scene was so new to me, and I so rarely meet any one who sees things as I do, that I know you will forgive me.” She bent her eyes upon him with a certain soft timidity. “You are an artist?”

“I am afraid not,” he said, coloring and smiling faintly; “I don’t think I could draw a straight line.”

“Don’t try to; they’re not pretty, and the mere ability to draw them straight or curved doesn’t make an artist. But you are a LOVER of nature, I know, and from what I have heard you say I believe you can do what lovers cannot do,–make others feel as they do,–and that is what I call being an artist. You write? You are a poet?”

“Oh dear, no,” he said with a smile, half of relief and half of naive superiority, “I’m a prose writer–on a daily newspaper.”

To his surprise she was not disconcerted; rather a look of animation lit up her face as she said brightly, “Oh, then, you can of course satisfy my curiosity about something. You know the road from San Francisco to the Cliff House. Except for the view of the sea-lions when one gets there it’s stupid; my brother says it’s like all the San Francisco excursions,–a dusty drive with a julep at the end of it. Well, one day we were coming back from a drive there, and when we were beginning to wind along the brow of that dreadful staring Lone Mountain Cemetery, I said I would get out and walk, and avoid the obtrusive glitter of those tombstones rising before me all the way. I pushed open a little gate and passed in. Once among these funereal shrubs and cold statuesque lilies everything was changed; I saw the staring tombstones no longer, for, like them, I seemed to be always facing the sea. The road had vanished; everything had vanished but the endless waste of ocean below me, and the last slope of rock and sand. It seemed to be the fittest place for a cemetery,–this end of the crumbling earth,– this beginning of the eternal sea. There! don’t think that idea my own, or that I thought of it then. No,–I read it all afterwards, and that’s why I’m telling you this.”

She could not help smiling at his now attentive face, and went on: “Some days afterwards I got hold of a newspaper four or six months old, and there was a description of all that I thought I had seen and felt,–only far more beautiful and touching, as you shall see, for I cut it out of the paper and have kept it. It seemed to me that it must be some personal experience,–as if the writer had followed some dear friend there,–although it was with the unostentation and indefiniteness of true and delicate feeling. It impressed me so much that I went back there twice or thrice, and always seemed to move to the rhythm of that beautiful funeral march–and I am afraid, being a woman, that I wandered around among the graves as though I could find out who it was that had been sung so sweetly, and if it were man or woman. I’ve got it here,” she said, taking a dainty ivory porte-monnaie from her pocket and picking out with two slim finger-tips a folded slip of newspaper; “and I thought that maybe you might recognize the style of the writer, and perhaps know something of his history. For I believe he has one. There! that is only a part of the article, of course, but it is the part that interested me. Just read from there,” she pointed, leaning partly over his shoulder so that her soft breath stirred his hair, “to the end; it isn’t long.”

In the film that seemed to come across his eyes, suddenly the print appeared blurred and indistinct. But he knew that she had put into his hand something he had written after the death of his wife; something spontaneous and impulsive, when her loss still filled his days and nights and almost unconsciously swayed his pen. He remembered that his eyes had been as dim when he wrote it–and now– handed to him by this smiling, well-to-do woman, he was as shocked at first as if he had suddenly found her reading his private letters. This was followed by a sudden sense of shame that he had ever thus publicly bared his feelings, and then by the illogical but irresistible conviction that it was false and stupid. The few phrases she had pointed out appeared as cheap and hollow rhetoric amid the surroundings of their social tete-a-tete over the luncheon-table. There was small danger that this heady wine of woman’s praise would make him betray himself; there was no sign of gratified authorship in his voice as he quietly laid down the paper and said dryly: “I am afraid I can’t help you. You know it may be purely fanciful.”

“I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Ashwood thoughtfully. “At the same time it doesn’t strike me as a very abiding grief for that very reason. It’s TOO sympathetic. It strikes me that it might be the first grief of some one too young to be inured to sorrow or experienced enough to accept it as the common lot. But like all youthful impressions it is very sincere and true while it lasts. I don’t know whether one gets anything more real when one gets older.”

With an insincerity he could not account for, he now felt inclined to defend his previous sentiment, although all the while conscious of a certain charm in his companion’s graceful skepticism. He had in his truthfulness and independence hitherto always been quite free from that feeble admiration of cynicism which attacks the intellectually weak and immature, and his present predilection may have been due more to her charming personality. She was not at all like his sisters; she had none of Clementina’s cold abstraction, and none of Euphemia’s sharp and demonstrative effusiveness. And in his secret consciousness of her flattering foreknowledge of him, with her assurance that before they had ever met he had unwittingly influenced her, he began to feel more at his ease. His fair companion also, in the equally secret knowledge she had acquired of his history, felt as secure as if she had been formally introduced. Nobody could find fault with her for showing civility to the ostensible son of her host; it was not necessary that she should be aware of their family differences. There was a charm too in their enforced isolation, in what was the exceptional solitude of the little hotel that day, and the seclusion of their table by the window of the dining-room, which gave a charming domesticity to their repast. From time to time they glanced down the lonely canyon, losing itself in the afternoon shadow. Nevertheless Mrs. Ashwood’s preoccupation with Nature did not preclude a human curiosity to hear something more of John Milton’s quarrel with his father. There was certainly nothing of the prodigal son about him; there was no precocious evil knowledge in his frank eyes; no record of excesses in his healthy, fresh complexion; no unwholesome or disturbed tastes in what she had seen of his rural preferences and understanding of natural beauty. To have attempted any direct questioning that would have revealed his name and identity would have obliged her to speak of herself as his father’s guest. She began indirectly; he had said he had been a reporter, and he was still a chronicler of this strange life. He had of course heard of many cases of family feuds and estrangements? Her brother had told her of some dreadful vendettas he had known in the Southwest, and how whole families had been divided. Since she had been here she had heard of odd cases of brothers meeting accidentally after long and unaccounted separations; of husbands suddenly confronted with wives they had deserted; of fathers encountering discarded sons!

John Milton’s face betrayed no uneasy consciousness. If anything it was beginning to glow with a boyish admiration of the grace and intelligence of the fair speaker, that was perhaps heightened by an assumption of half coquettish discomfiture.

“You are laughing at me!” she said finally. “But inhuman and selfish as these stories may seem, and sometimes are, I believe that these curious estrangements and separations often come from some fatal weakness of temperament that might be strengthened, or some trivial misunderstanding that could be explained. It is separation that makes them seem irrevocable only because they are inexplicable, and a vague memory always seems more terrible than a definite one. Facts may be forgiven and forgotten, but mysteries haunt one always. I believe there are weak, sensitive people who dread to put their wrongs into shape; those are the kind who sulk, and when you add separation to sulking, reconciliation becomes impossible. I knew a very singular case of that kind once. If you like, I’ll tell it to you. May be you will be able, some day, to weave it into one of your writings. And it’s quite true.”

It is hardly necessary to say that John Milton had not been touched by any personal significance in his companion’s speech, whatever she may have intended; and it is equally true that whether she had presently forgotten her purpose, or had become suddenly interested in her own conversation, her face grew more animated, her manner more confidential, and something of the youthful enthusiasm she had shown in the mountain seemed to come back to her.

“I might say it happened anywhere and call the people M. or N., but it really did occur in my own family, and although I was much younger at the time it impressed me very strongly. My cousin, who had been my playmate, was an orphan, and had been intrusted to the care of my father, who was his guardian. He was always a clever boy, but singularly sensitive and quick to take offense. Perhaps it was because the little property his father had left made him partly dependent on my father, and that I was rich, but he seemed to feel the disparity in our positions. I was too young to understand it; I think it existed only in his imagination, for I believe we were treated alike. But I remember that he was full of vague threats of running away and going to sea, and that it was part of his weak temperament to terrify me with his extravagant confidences. I was always frightened when, after one of those scenes, he would pack his valise or perhaps only tie up a few things in a handkerchief, as in the advertisement pictures of the runaway slaves, and declare that we would never lay eyes upon him again. At first I never saw the ridiculousness of all this,–for I ought to have told you that he was a rather delicate and timid boy, and quite unfitted for a rough life or any exposure,–but others did, and one day I laughed at him and told him he was afraid. I shall never forget the expression of his face and never forgive myself for it. He went away,–but he returned the next day! He threatened once to commit suicide, left his clothes on the bank of the river, and came home in another suit of clothes he had taken with him. When I was sent abroad to school I lost sight of him; when I returned he was at college, apparently unchanged. When he came home for vacation, far from having been subdued by contact with strangers, it seemed that his unhappy sensitiveness had been only intensified by the ridicule of his fellows. He had even acquired a most ridiculous theory about the degrading effects of civilization, and wanted to go back to a state of barbarism. He said the wilderness was the only true home of man. My father, instead of bearing with what I believe was his infirmity, dryly offered him the means to try his experiment. He started for some place in Texas, saying we would never hear from him again. A month after he wrote for more money. My father replied rather impatiently, I suppose,–I never knew exactly what he wrote. That was some years ago. He had told the truth at last, for we never heard from him again.”

It is to be feared that John Milton was following the animated lips and eyes of the fair speaker rather than her story. Perhaps that was the reason why he said, “May he not have been a disappointed man?”

“I don’t understand,” she said simply.

“Perhaps,” said John Milton with a boyish blush, “you may have unconsciously raised hopes in his heart–and”–

“I should hardly attempt to interest a chronicler of adventure like you in such a very commonplace, every-day style of romance,” she said, with a little impatience, “even if my vanity compelled me to make such confidences to a stranger. No,–it was nothing quite as vulgar as that. And,” she added quickly, with a playfully amused smile as she saw the young fellow’s evident distress, “I should have probably heard from him again. Those stories always end in that way.”

“And you think?”–said John Milton.

“I think,” said Mrs. Ashwood slowly, “that he actually did commit suicide–or effaced himself in some way, just as firmly as I believe he might have been saved by judicious treatment. Otherwise we should have heard from him. You’ll say that’s only a woman’s reasoning–but I think our perceptions are often instinctive, and I knew his character.”

Still following the play of her delicate features into a romance of his own weaving, the imaginative young reporter who had seen so much from the heights of Russian Hill said earnestly, “Then I have your permission to use this material at any future time?”

“Yes,” said the lady smilingly.

“And you will not mind if I should take some liberties with the text?”

“I must of course leave something to your artistic taste. But you will let me see it?”

There were voices outside now, breaking the silence of the veranda. They had been so preoccupied as not to notice the arrival of a horseman. Steps came along the passage; the landlord returned. Mrs. Ashwood turned quickly towards him.

“Mr. Grant, of your party, ma’am, to fetch you.”

She saw an unmistakable change in her young friend’s mobile face. “I will be ready in a moment,” she said to the landlord. Then, turning to John Milton, the arch-hypocrite said sweetly: “My brother must have known instinctively that I was in good hands, as he didn’t come. But I am sorry, for I should have so liked to introduce him to you–although by the way,” with a bright smile, “I don’t think you have yet told me your name. I know I couldn’t have FORGOTTEN it.”

“Harcourt,” said John Milton, with a half-embarrassed laugh.

“But you must come and see me, Mr.–Mr. Harcourt,” she said, producing a card from a case already in her fingers, “at my hotel, and let my brother thank you there for your kindness and gallantry to a stranger. I shall be here a few weeks longer before we go south to look for a place where my brother can winter. DO come and see me, although I cannot introduce you to anything as real and beautiful as what YOU have shown me to-day. Good-by, Mr. Harcourt; I won’t trouble you to come down and bore yourself with my escort’s questions and congratulations.”

She bent her head and allowed her soft eyes to rest upon his with a graciousness that was beyond her speech, pulled her veil over her eyes again, with a pretty suggestion that she had no further use for them, and taking her riding-skirt lightly in her hand seemed to glide from the room.

On her way to San Mateo, where it appeared the disorganized party had prolonged their visit to accept an invitation to dine with a local magnate, she was pleasantly conversational with the slightly abstracted Grant. She was so sorry to have given them all this trouble and anxiety! Of course she ought to have waited at the fork of the road, but she had never doubted but she could rejoin them presently on the main road. She was glad that Miss Euphemia’s runaway horse had been stopped without accident; it would have been dreadful if anything had happened to HER; Mr. Harcourt seemed so wrapped up in his girls. It was a pity they never had a son–Ah? Indeed! Then there was a son? So–and father and son had quarreled? That was so sad. And for some trifling cause, no doubt?

“I believe he married the housemaid,” said Grant grimly. “Be careful!–Allow me.”

“It’s no use!” said Mrs. Ashwood, flushing with pink impatience, as she recovered her seat, which a sudden bolt of her mustang had imperiled, “I really can’t make out the tricks of this beast! Thank you,” she added, with a sweet smile, “but I think I can manage him now. I can’t see why he stopped. I’ll be more careful. You were saying the son was married–surely not that boy!”

“Boy!” echoed Grant. “Then you know?”–

“I mean of course he must be a boy–they all grew up here–and it was only five or six years ago that their parents emigrated,” she retorted a little impatiently. “And what about this creature?”

“Your horse?”

“You know I mean the woman he married. Of course she was older than he–and caught him?”

“I think there was a year or two difference,” said Grant quietly.

“Yes, but your gallantry keeps you from telling the truth; which is that the women, in cases of this kind, are much older and more experienced.”

“Are they? Well, perhaps she is, NOW. She is dead.”

Mrs. Ashwood walked her horse. “Poor thing,” she said. Then a sudden idea took possession of her and brought a film to her eyes. “How long ago?” she asked in a low voice.

“About six or seven months, I think. I believe there was a baby who died too.”

She continued to walk her horse slowly, stroking its curved neck. “I think it’s perfectly shameful!” she said suddenly.

“Not so bad as that, Mrs. Ashwood, surely. The girl may have loved him–and he”–

“You know perfectly what I mean, Mr. Grant. I speak of the conduct of the mother and father and those two sisters!”

Grant slightly elevated his eyebrows. “But you forget, Mrs. Ashwood. It was young Harcourt and his wife’s own act. They preferred to take their own path and keep it.”

“I think,” said Mrs. Ashwood authoritatively, “that the idea of leaving those two unfortunate children to suffer and struggle on alone–out there–on the sand hills of San Francisco–was simply disgraceful!”

Later that evening she was unreasonably annoyed to find that her brother, Mr. John Shipley, had taken advantage of the absence of Grant to pay marked attention to Clementina, and had even prevailed upon that imperious goddess to accompany him after dinner on a moonlight stroll upon the veranda and terraces of Los Pajaros. Nevertheless she seemed to recover her spirits enough to talk volubly of the beautiful scenery she had discovered in her late perilous abandonment in the wilds of the Coast Range; to aver her intention to visit it again; to speak of it in a severely practical way as offering a far better site for the cottages of the young married couples just beginning life than the outskirts of towns or the bleak sand hills of San Francisco; and thence by graceful degrees into a dissertation upon popular fallacies in regard to hasty marriages, and the mistaken idea of some parents in not accepting the inevitable and making the best of it. She still found time to enter into an appreciative and exhaustive criticism upon the literature and journalistic enterprise of the Pacific Coast with the proprietor of the “Pioneer,” and to cause that gentleman to declare that whatever people might say about rich and fashionable Eastern women, that Mrs. Ashwood’s head was about as level as it was pretty.

The next morning found her more thoughtful and subdued, and when her brother came upon her sitting on the veranda, while the party were preparing to return, she was reading a newspaper slip that she had taken from her porte-monnaie, with a face that was partly shadowed.

“What have you struck there, Conny?” said her brother gayly. “It looks too serious for a recipe.”

“Something I should like you to read some time, Jack,” she said, lifting her lashes with a slight timidity, “if you would take the trouble. I really wonder how it would impress you.”

“Pass it over,” said Jack Shipley good-humoredly, with his cigar between his lips. “I’ll take it now.”

She handed him the slip and turned partly away; he took it, glanced at it sideways, turned it over, and suddenly his look grew concentrated, and he took the cigar from his lips.

“Well,” she said playfully, turning to him again. “What do you think of it?”

“Think of it?” he said with a rising color. “I think it’s infamous! Who did it?”

She stared at him, then glanced quickly at the slip. “What are you reading?” she said.

“This, of course,” he said impatiently. “What you gave me.” But he was pointing to THE OTHER SIDE of the newspaper slip.

She took it from him impatiently and read for the first time the printing on the reverse side of the article she had treasured so long. It was the concluding paragraph of an apparently larger editorial. “One thing is certain, that a man in Daniel Harcourt’s position cannot afford to pass over in silence accusations like the above, that affect not only his private character, but the integrity of his title to the land that was the foundation of his fortune. When trickery, sharp practice, and even criminality in the past are more than hinted at, they cannot be met by mere pompous silence or allusions to private position, social prestige, or distinguished friends in the present.”

Mrs. Ashwood turned the slip over with scornful impatience, a pretty uplifting of her eyebrows and a slight curl of her lip. “I suppose none of those people’s beginnings can bear looking into– and they certainly should be the last ones to find fault with anybody. But, good gracious, Jack! what has this to do with you?”

“With me?” said Shipley angrily. “Why, I proposed to Clementina last night!”

CHAPTER IX.

The wayfarers on the Tasajara turnpike, whom Mr. Daniel Harcourt passed with his fast trotting mare and sulky, saw that their great fellow-townsman was more than usually preoccupied and curt in his acknowledgment of their salutations. Nevertheless as he drew near the creek, he partly checked his horse, and when he reached a slight acclivity of the interminable plain–which had really been the bank of the creek in bygone days–he pulled up, alighted, tied his horse to a rail fence, and clambering over the inclosure made his way along the ridge. It was covered with nettles, thistles, and a few wiry dwarf larches of native growth; dust from the adjacent highway had invaded it, with a few scattered and torn handbills, waste paper, rags, empty provision cans, and other suburban debris. Yet it was the site of ‘Lige Curtis’s cabin, long since erased and forgotten. The bed of the old creek had receded; the last tules had been cleared away; the channel and embarcadero were half a mile from the bank and log whereon the pioneer of Tasajara had idly sunned himself.

Mr. Harcourt walked on, occasionally turning over the scattered objects with his foot, and stopping at times to examine the ground more closely. It had not apparently been disturbed since he himself, six years ago, had razed the wretched shanty and carried off its timbers to aid in the erection of a larger cabin further inland. He raised his eyes to the prospect before him,–to the town with its steamboats lying at the wharves, to the grain elevator, the warehouses, the railroad station with its puffing engines, the flagstaff of Harcourt House and the clustering roofs of the town, and beyond, the painted dome of his last creation, the Free Library. This was all HIS work, HIS planning, HIS foresight, whatever they might say of the wandering drunkard from whose tremulous fingers he had snatched the opportunity. They could not take THAT from him, however they might follow him with envy and reviling, any more than they could wrest from him the five years of peaceful possession. It was with something of the prosperous consciousness with which he had mounted the platform on the opening of the Free Library, that he now climbed into his buggy and drove away.

Nevertheless he stopped at his Land Office as he drove into town, and gave a few orders. “I want a strong picket fence put around the fifty-vara lot in block fifty-seven, and the ground cleared up at once. Let me know when the men get to work, and I’ll overlook them.”

Re-entering his own house in the square, where Mrs. Harcourt and Clementina–who often accompanied him in those business visits– were waiting for him with luncheon, he smiled somewhat superciliously as the servant informed him that “Professor Grant had just arrived.” Really that man was trying to make the most of his time with Clementina! Perhaps the rival attractions of that Boston swell Shipley had something to do with it! He must positively talk to Clementina about this. In point of fact he himself was a little disappointed in Grant, who, since his offer to take the task of hunting down his calumniators, had really done nothing. He turned into his study, but was slightly astonished to find that Grant, instead of paying court to Clementina in the adjoining drawing-room, was sitting rather thoughtfully in his own armchair.

He rose as Harcourt entered. “I didn’t let them announce me to the ladies,” he said, “as I have some important business with you first, and we may find it necessary that I should take the next train back to town. You remember that a few weeks ago I offered to look into the matter of those slanders against you. I apprehended it would be a trifling matter of envy or jealousy on the part of your old associates or neighbors which could be put straight with a little good feeling; but I must be frank with you, Harcourt, and say at the beginning that it turns out to be an infernally ugly business. Call it conspiracy if you like, or organized hostility, I’m afraid it will require a lawyer rather than an arbitrator to manage it, and the sooner the better. For the most unpleasant thing about it is, that I can’t find out exactly HOW BAD it is!”

Unfortunately the weaker instinct of Harcourt’s nature was first roused; the vulgar rage which confounds the bearer of ill news with the news itself filled his breast. “And this is all that your confounded intermeddling came to?” he said brutally.

“No,” said Grant quietly, with a preoccupied ignoring of the insult that was more hopeless for Harcourt. “I found out that it is claimed that this ‘Lige Curtis was not drowned nor lost that night; but that he escaped, and for three years has convinced another man that you are wrongfully in possession of this land; that these two naturally hold you in their power, and that they are only waiting for you to be forced into legal proceedings for slander to prove all their charges. Until then, for some reason best known to themselves, Curtis remains in the background.”

“Does he deny the deed under which I hold the property?” said Harcourt savagely.

“He says it was only a security for a trifling loan, and not an actual transfer.”

“And don’t those fools know that his security could be forfeited?”

“Yes, but not in the way it is recorded in the county clerk’s office. They say that the record shows that there was an interpolation in the paper he left with you–which was a forgery. Briefly, Harcourt, you are accused of that. More,–it is intimated that when he fell into the creek that night, and escaped on a raft that was floating past, that he had been first stunned by a blow from some one interested in getting rid of him.”

He paused and glanced out of the window.

“Is that all?” asked Harcourt in a perfectly quiet, steady, voice.

“All!” replied Grant, struck with the change in his companion’s manner, and turning his eyes upon him quickly.

The change indeed was marked and significant. Whether from relief at knowing the worst, or whether he was experiencing the same reaction from the utter falsity of this last accusation that he had felt when Grant had unintentionally wronged him in his previous recollection, certain it is that some unknown reserve of strength in his own nature, of which he knew nothing before, suddenly came to his aid in this extremity. It invested him with an uncouth dignity that for the first time excited Grant’s respect.

“I beg your pardon, Grant, for the hasty way I spoke to you a moment ago, for I thank you, and appreciate thoroughly and sincerely what you have done. You are right; it is a matter for fighting and not fussing over. But I must have a head to hit. Whose is it?”

“The man who holds himself legally responsible is Fletcher,–the proprietor of the ‘Clarion,’ and a man of property.”

“The ‘Clarion’? That is the paper which began the attack?” said Harcourt.

“Yes, and it is only fair to tell you here that your son threw up his place on it in consequence of its attack upon you.”

There was perhaps the slightest possible shrinking in Harcourt’s eyelids–the one congenital likeness to his discarded son–but his otherwise calm demeanor did not change. Grant went on more cheerfully: “I’ve told you all I know. When I spoke of an unknown WORST, I did not refer to any further accusation, but to whatever evidence they might have fabricated or suborned to prove any one of them. It is only the strength and fairness of the hands they hold that is uncertain. Against that you have your certain uncontested possession, the peculiar character and antecedents of this ‘Lige Curtis, which would make his evidence untrustworthy and even make it difficult for them to establish his identity. I am told that his failure to contest your appropriation of his property is explained by the fact of his being absent from the country most of the time; but again, this would not account for their silence until within the last six months, unless they have been waiting for further evidence to establish it. But even then they must have known that the time of recovery had passed. You are a practical man, Harcourt; I needn’t tell you therefore what your lawyer will probably tell you, that practically, so far as your rights are concerned, you remain as before these calumnies; that a cause of action unprosecuted or in abeyance is practically no cause, and that it is not for you to anticipate one. BUT”–

He paused and looked steadily at Harcourt. Harcourt met his look with a dull, ox-like stolidity. “I shall begin the suit at once,” he said.

“And I,” said Grant, holding out his hand, “will stand by you. But tell me now what you knew of this man Curtis,–his character and disposition; it may be some clue as to what are his methods and his intentions.”

Harcourt briefly sketched ‘Lige Curtis as he knew him and understood him. It was another indication of his reserved power that the description was so singularly clear, practical, unprejudiced, and impartial that it impressed Grant with its truthfulness.

“I can’t make him out,” he said; “you have drawn a weak, but neither a dishonest nor malignant man. There must have been somebody behind him. Can you think of any personal enemy?”

“I have been subjected to the usual jealousy and envy of my old neighbors, I suppose, but nothing more. I have harmed no one knowingly.”

Grant was silent; it had flashed across him that Rice might have harbored revenge for his father-in-law’s interference in his brief matrimonial experience. He had also suddenly recalled his conversation with Billings on the day that he first arrived at Tasajara. It would not be strange if this man had some intimation of the secret. He would try to find him that evening. He rose.

“You will stay to dinner? My wife and Clementina will expect you.”

“Not to-night; I am dining at the hotel,” said Grant, smilingly; “but I will come in later in the evening if I may.” He paused hesitatingly for a moment. “Have your wife and daughter ever expressed any opinion on this matter?”

“No,” said Harcourt. “Mrs. Harcourt knows nothing of anything that does not happen IN the house; Euphemia knows only the things that happen out of it where she is visiting–and I suppose that young men prefer to talk to her about other things than the slanders of her father. And Clementina–well, you know how calm and superior to these things SHE is.”

“For that very reason I thought that perhaps she might be able to see them more clearly,–but no matter! I dare say you are quite right in not discussing them at home.” This was the fact, although Grant had not forgotten that Harcourt had put forward his daughters as a reason for stopping the scandal some weeks before,–a reason which, however, seemed never to have been borne out by any apparent sensitiveness of the girls themselves.

When Grant had left, Harcourt remained for some moments steadfastly gazing from the window over the Tasajara plain. He had not lost his look of concentrated power, nor his determination to fight. A struggle between himself and the phantoms of the past had become now a necessary stimulus for its own sake,–for the sake of his mental and physical equipoise. He saw before him the pale, agitated, irresolute features of ‘Lige Curtis,–not the man HE had injured, but the man who had injured HIM, whose spirit was aimlessly and wantonly–for he had never attempted to get back his possessions in his lifetime, nor ever tried to communicate with the possessor–striking at him in the shadow. And it was THAT man, that pale, writhing, frightened wretch whom he had once mercifully helped! Yes, whose LIFE he had even saved that night from exposure and delirium tremens when he had given him the whiskey. And this life he had saved, only to have it set in motion a conspiracy to ruin him! Who knows that ‘Lige had not purposely conceived what they had believed to be an attempt at suicide, only to cast suspicion of murder on HIM! From which it will be perceived that Harcourt’s powers of moral reasoning had not improved in five years, and that even the impartiality he had just shown in his description of ‘Lige to Grant had been swallowed up in this new sense of injury. The founder of Tasajara, whose cool business logic, unfailing foresight, and practical deductions were never at fault, was once more childishly adrift in his moral ethics.

And there was Clementina, of whose judgment Grant had spoken so persistently,–could she assist him? It was true, as he had said, he had never talked to her of his affairs. In his sometimes uneasy consciousness of her superiority he had shrunk from even revealing his anxieties, much less his actual secret, and from anything that might prejudice the lofty paternal attitude he had taken towards his daughters from the beginning of his good fortune. He was never quite sure if her acceptance of it was real; he was never entirely free from a certain jealousy that always mingled with his pride in her superior rectitude; and yet his feeling was distinct from the good-natured contempt he had for his wife’s loyalty, the anger and suspicion that his son’s opposition had provoked, and the half- affectionate toleration he had felt for Euphemia’s waywardness. However he would sound Clementina without betraying himself.

He was anticipated by a slight step in the passage and the pushing open of his study door. The tall, graceful figure of the girl herself stood in the opening.

“They tell me Mr. Grant has been here. Does he stay to dinner?”

“No, he has an engagement at the hotel, but he will probably drop in later. Come in, Clemmy, I want to talk to you. Shut the door and sit down.”

She slipped in quietly, shut the door, took a seat on the sofa, softly smoothed down her gown, and turned her graceful head and serenely composed face towards him. Sitting thus she looked like some finely finished painting that decorated rather than belonged to the room,–not only distinctly alien to the flesh and blood relative before her, but to the house, and even the local, monotonous landscape beyond the window with the shining new shingles and chimneys that cut the new blue sky. These singular perfections seemed to increase in Harcourt’s mind the exasperating sense of injury inflicted upon him by ‘Lige’s exposures. With a daughter so incomparably gifted,–a matchless creation that was enough in herself to ennoble that fortune which his own skill and genius had lifted from the muddy tules of Tasajara where this ‘Lige had left it,–that SHE should be subjected to this annoyance seemed an infamy that Providence could not allow! What was his mere venial transgression to this exaggerated retribution?

“Clemmy, girl, I’m going to ask you a question. Listen, pet.” He had begun with a reminiscent tenderness of the epoch of her childhood, but meeting the unresponding maturity of her clear eyes he abandoned it. “You know, Clementina, I have never interfered in your affairs, nor tried to influence your friendships for anybody. Whatever people may have to say of me they can’t say that! I’ve always trusted you, as I would myself, to choose your own associates; I have never regretted it, and I don’t regret it now. But I’d like to know–I have reasons to-day for asking–how matters stand between you and Grant.”

The Parian head of Minerva on the bookcase above her did not offer the spectator a face less free from maidenly confusion than Clementina’s at that moment. Her father had certainly expected none, but he was not prepared for the perfect coolness of her reply.

“Do you mean, have I ACCEPTED him?”

“No,–well–yes.”

“No, then! Is that what he wished to see you about? It was understood that he was not to allude again to the subject to any one.”

“He has not to ME. It was only my own idea. He had something very different to tell me. You may not know, Clementina,” he begun cautiously, “that I have been lately the subject of some anonymous slanders, and Grant has taken the trouble to track them down for me. It is a calumny that goes back as far as Sidon, and I may want your level head and good memory to help me to refute it.” He then repeated calmly and clearly, with no trace of the fury that had raged within him a moment before, the substance of Grant’s revelation.

The young girl listened without apparent emotion. When he had finished she said quickly: “And what do you want me to recollect?”

The hardest part of Harcourt’s task was coming. “Well, don’t you remember that I told you the day the surveyors went away–that–I had bought this land of ‘Lige Curtis some time before?”

“Yes, I remember your saying so, but”–

“But what?”

“I thought you only meant that to satisfy mother.”

Daniel Harcourt felt the blood settling round his heart, but he was constrained by an irresistible impulse to know the worst. “Well, what did YOU think it really was?”

“I only thought that ‘Lige Curtis had simply let you have it, that’s all.”

Harcourt breathed again. “But what for? Why should he?”

“Well–ON MY ACCOUNT.”

“On YOUR account! What in Heaven’s name had YOU to do with it?”

“He loved me.” There was not the slightest trace of vanity, self- consciousness or coquetry in her quiet, fateful face, and for this very reason Harcourt knew that she was speaking the truth.

“Loved YOU!–you, Clementina!–my daughter! Did he ever TELL you so?”

“Not in words. He used to walk up and down on the road when I was at the back window or in the garden, and often hung about the bank of the creek for hours, like some animal. I don’t think the others saw him, and when they did they thought it was Parmlee for Euphemia. Even Euphemia thought so too, and that was why she was so conceited and hard to Parmlee towards the end. She thought it was Parmlee that night when Grant and Rice came; but it was ‘Lige Curtis who had been watching the window lights in the rain, and who must have gone off at last to speak to you in the store. I always let Phemie believe that it was Parmlee,–it seemed to please her.”

There was not the least tone of mischief or superiority, or even of patronage in her manner. It was as quiet and cruel as the fate that might have led ‘Lige to his destruction. Even her father felt a slight thrill of awe as she paused. “Then he never really spoke to you?” he asked hurriedly.

“Only once. I was gathering swamp lilies all alone, a mile below the bend of the creek, and he came upon me suddenly. Perhaps it was that I didn’t jump or start–I didn’t see anything to jump or start at–that he said, ‘You’re not frightened at me, Miss Harcourt, like the other girls? You don’t think I’m drunk or half mad–as they do?’ I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it meant that whether he was drunk or half mad or sober I didn’t see any reason to be afraid of him. And then he told me that if I was fond of swamp lilies I might have all I wanted at his place, and for the matter of that the place too, as he was going away, for he couldn’t stand the loneliness any longer. He said that he had nothing in common with the place and the people–no more than I had–and that was what he had always fancied in me. I told him that if he felt in that way about his place he ought to leave it, or sell it to some one who cared for it, and go away. That must have been in his mind when he offered it to you,–at least that’s what I thought when you told us you had bought it. I didn’t know but what he might have told you, but you didn’t care to say it before mother.”

Mr. Harcourt sat gazing at her with breathless amazement. “And you–think that–‘Lige Curtis–lov–liked you?”

“Yes, I think he did–and that he does now!”

“NOW! What do you mean? The man is dead!” said Harcourt starting.

“That’s just what I don’t believe.”

“Impossible! Think of what you are saying.”

“I never could quite understand or feel that he was dead when everybody said so, and now that I’ve heard this story I KNOW that he is living.”

“But why did he not make himself known in time to claim the property?”

“Because he did not care for it.”

“What did he care for, then?”

“Me, I suppose.”

“But this calumny is not like a man who loves you.”

“It is like a JEALOUS one.”

With an effort Harcourt threw off his bewildered incredulity and grasped the situation. He would have to contend with his enemy in the flesh and blood, but that flesh and blood would be very weak in the hands of the impassive girl beside him. His face lightened.

The same idea might have been in Clementina’s mind when she spoke again, although her face had remained unchanged. “I do not see why YOU should bother yourself further about it,” she said. “It is only a matter between myself and him; you can leave it to me.”

“But if you are mistaken and he should not be living?”

“I am not mistaken. I am even certain now that I have seen him.”

“Seen him!”

“Yes,” said the girl with the first trace of animation in her face. “It was four or five months ago when we were visiting the Briones at Monterey. We had ridden out to the old Mission by moonlight. There were some Mexicans lounging around the posada, and one of them attracted my attention by the way he seemed to watch me, without revealing any more of his face than I could see between his serape and the black silk handkerchief that was tied around his head under his sombrero. But I knew he was an American–and his eyes were familiar. I believe it was he.”

“Why did you not speak of it before?”

The look of animation died out of the girl’s face. “Why should I?” she said listlessly. “I did not know of these reports then. He was nothing more to us. You wouldn’t have cared to see him again.” She rose, smoothed out her skirt and stood looking at her father. “There is one thing, of course, that you’ll do at once.”

Her voice had changed so oddly that he said quickly: “What’s that?”

“Call Grant off the scent. He’ll only frighten or exasperate your game, and that’s what you don’t want.”

Her voice was as imperious as it had been previously listless. And it was the first time he had ever known her to use slang.

It seemed as startling as if it had fallen from the marble lips above him.

“But I’ve promised him that we should go together to my lawyer to- morrow, and begin a suit against the proprietors of the ‘Clarion.'”

“Do nothing of the kind. Get rid of Grant’s assistance in this matter; and see the ‘Clarion’ proprietor yourself. What sort of a man is he? Can you invite him to your house?”

“I have never seen him; I believe he lives at San Jose. He is a wealthy man and a large land owner there. You understand that after the first article appeared in his paper, and I knew that he had employed your brother–although Grant says that he had nothing to do with it and left Fletcher on account of it–I could have no intercourse with him. Even if I invited him he would not come.”

“He MUST come. Leave it to ME.” She stopped and resumed her former impassive manner. “I had something to say to you too, father. Mr. Shipley proposed to me the day we went to San Mateo.”

Her father’s eyes lit with an eager sparkle. “Well,” he said quickly.

“I reminded him that I had known him only a few weeks, and that I wanted time to consider.”

“Consider! Why, Clemmy, he’s one of the oldest Boston families, rich from his father and grandfather–rich when I was a shopkeeper and your mother”–

“I thought you liked Grant?” she said quietly.

“Yes, but if YOU have no choice nor feeling in the matter, why Shipley is far the better man. And if any of the scandal should come to his ears”–

“So much the better that the hesitation should come from me. But if you think it better, I can sit down here and write to him at once declining the offer.” She moved towards the desk.

“No! No! I did not mean that,” said Harcourt quickly. “I only thought that if he did hear anything it might be said that he had backed out.”

“His sister knows of his offer, and though she don’t like it nor me, she will not deny the fact. By the way, you remember when she was lost that day on the road to San Mateo?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she was with your son, John Milton, all the time, and they lunched together at Crystal Spring. It came out quite accidentally through the hotel-keeper.”

Harcourt’s brow darkened. “Did she know him before?”

“I can’t say; but she does now.”

Harcourt’s face was heavy with distrust. “Taking Shipley’s offer and these scandals into consideration, I don’t like the look of this, Clementina.”

“I do,” said the girl simply.

Harcourt gazed at her keenly and with the shadow of distrust still upon him. It seemed to be quite impossible, even with what he knew of her calmly cold nature, that she should be equally uninfluenced by Grant or Shipley. Had she some steadfast, lofty ideal, or perhaps some already absorbing passion of which he knew nothing? She was not a girl to betray it–they would only know it when it was too late. Could it be possible that there was still something between her and ‘Lige that he knew nothing of? The thought struck a chill to his breast. She was walking towards the door, when he recalled himself with an effort.

“If you think it advisable to see Fletcher, you might run down to San Jose for a day or two with your mother, and call on the Ramirez. They may know him or somebody who does. Of course if YOU meet him and casually invite him it would be different.”

“It’s a good idea,” she said quickly. “I’ll do it, and speak to mother now.”

He was struck by the change in her face and voice; they had both nervously lightened, as oddly and distinctly as they had before seemed to grow suddenly harsh and aggressive. She passed out of the room with girlish brusqueness, leaving him alone with a new and vague fear in his consciousness.

A few hours later Clementina was standing before the window of the drawing-room that overlooked the outskirts of the town. The moonlight was flooding the vast bluish Tasajara levels with a faint lustre, as if the waters of the creek had once more returned to them. In the shadow of the curtain beside her Grant was facing her with anxious eyes.

“Then I must take this as your final answer, Clementina?”

“You must. And had I known of these calumnies before, had you been frank with me even the day we went to San Mateo, my answer would have been as final then, and you might have been spared any further suspense. I am not blaming you, Mr. Grant; I am willing to believe that you thought it best to conceal this from me,–even at that time when you had just pledged yourself to find out its truth or falsehood,–yet my answer would have been the same. So long as this stain rests on my father’s name I shall never allow that name to be coupled with yours in marriage or engagement; nor will my pride or yours allow us to carry on a simple friendship after this. I thank you for your offer of assistance, but I cannot even accept that which might to others seem to allow some contingent claim. I would rather believe that when you proposed this inquiry and my father permitted it, you both knew that it put an end to any other relations between us.”

“But, Clementina, you are wrong, believe me! Say that I have been foolish, indiscreet, mad,–still the few who knew that I made these inquiries on your father’s behalf know nothing of my hopes of YOU!”

“But I do, and that is enough for me.”

Even in the hopeless preoccupation of his passion he suddenly looked at her with something of his old critical scrutiny. But she stood there calm, concentrated, self-possessed and upright. Yes! it was possible that the pride of this Southwestern shopkeepers daughter was greater than his own.

“Then you banish me, Clementina?”

“It is we whom YOU have banished.”

“Good-night.”

“Good-by.”

He bent for an instant over her cold hand, and then passed out into the hall. She remained listening until the front door closed behind him. Then she ran swiftly through the hall and up the staircase, with an alacrity that seemed impossible to the stately goddess of a moment before. When she had reached her bedroom and closed the door, so exuberant still and so uncontrollable was her levity and action, that without going round the bed which stood before her in the centre of the room, she placed her two hands upon it and lightly vaulted sideways across it to reach the window. There she watched the figure of Grant crossing the moonlit square. Then turning back into the half-lit room, she ran to the small dressing-glass placed at an angle on a toilet table against the wall. With her palms grasping her knees she stooped down suddenly and contemplated the mirror. It showed what no one but Clementina had ever seen,–and she herself only at rare intervals,–the laughing eyes and soul of a self-satisfied, material-minded, ordinary country-girl!

CHAPTER X.

But Mr. Lawrence Grant’s character in certain circumstances would seem to have as startling and inexplicable contradictions as Clementina Harcourt’s, and three days later he halted his horse at the entrance of Los Gatos Rancho. The Home of the Cats–so called from the catamounts which infested the locality–which had for over a century lazily basked before one of the hottest canyons in the Coast Range, had lately been stirred into some activity by the American, Don Diego Fletcher, who had bought it, put up a saw-mill, and deforested the canyon. Still there remained enough suggestion of a feline haunt about it to make Grant feel as if he had tracked hither some stealthy enemy, in spite of the peaceful intimation conveyed by the sign on a rough boarded shed at the wayside, that the “Los Gatos Land and Lumber Company” held their office there.

A cigarette-smoking peon lounged before the door. Yes; Don Diego was there, but as he had arrived from Santa Clara only last night and was going to Colonel Ramirez that afternoon, he was engaged. Unless the business was important–but the cool, determined manner of Grant, even more than his words, signified that it WAS important, and the servant led the way to Don Diego’s presence.

There certainly was nothing in the appearance of this sylvan proprietor and newspaper capitalist to justify Grant’s suspicion of a surreptitious foe. A handsome man scarcely older than himself, in spite of a wavy mass of perfectly white hair which contrasted singularly with his brown mustache and dark sunburned face. So disguising was the effect of these contradictions, that he not only looked unlike anybody else, but even his nationality seemed to be a matter of doubt. Only his eyes, light blue and intelligent, which had a singular expression of gentleness and worry, appeared individual to the man. His manner was cultivated and easy. He motioned his visitor courteously to a chair.

“I was referred to you,” said Grant, almost abruptly, “as the person responsible for a series of slanderous attacks against Mr. Daniel Harcourt in the ‘Clarion,’ of which paper I believe you are the proprietor. I was told that you declined to give the authority for your action, unless you were forced to by legal proceedings.”

Fletcher’s sensitive blue eyes rested upon Grant’s with an expression of constrained pain and pity. “I heard of your inquiries, Mr. Grant; you were making them on behalf of this Mr. Harcourt or Harkutt”–he made the distinction with intentional deliberation–“with a view, I believe, to some arbitration. The case was stated to you fairly, I think; I believe I have nothing to add to it.”

“That was your answer to the ambassador of Mr. Harcourt,” said Grant, coldly, “and as such I delivered it to him; but I am here to-day to speak on my own account.”

What could be seen of Mr. Fletcher’s lips appeared to curl in an odd smile. “Indeed, I thought it was–or would be–all in the family.”

Grant’s face grew more stern, and his gray eyes glittered. “You’ll find my status in this matter so far independent that I don’t propose, like Mr. Harcourt, either to begin a suit or to rest quietly under the calumny. Briefly, Mr. Fletcher, as you or your informant knows, I was the surveyor who revealed to Mr. Harcourt the value of the land to which he claimed a title from your man, this Elijah or ‘Lige Curtis as you call him,”–he could not resist this imitation of his adversary’s supercilious affectation of precise nomenclature,–“and it was upon my representation of its value as an investment that he began the improvements which have made him wealthy. If this title was fraudulently obtained, all the facts pertaining to it are sufficiently related to connect me with the conspiracy.”

“Are you not a little hasty in your presumption, Mr. Grant?” said Fletcher, with unfeigned surprise.

“That is for ME to judge, Mr. Fletcher,” returned Grant, haughtily.

“But the name of Professor Grant is known to all California as beyond the breath of calumny or suspicion.”

“It is because of that fact that I propose to keep it so.”

“And may I ask in what way you wish me to assist you in so doing?”

“By promptly and publicly retracting in the ‘Clarion’ every word of this slander against Harcourt.”

Fletcher looked steadfastly at the speaker. “And if I decline?”

“I think you have been long enough in California, Mr. Fletcher, to know the alternative expected of a gentleman,” said Grant, coldly.

Mr. Fletcher kept his gentle blue eyes–in which surprise still overbalanced their expression of pained concern–on Grant’s face.

“But is not this more in the style of Colonel Starbottle than Professor Grant?” he asked, with a faint smile.

Grant rose instantly with a white face. “You will have a better opportunity of judging,” he said, “when Colonel Starbottle has the honor of waiting upon you from me. Meantime, I thank you for reminding me of the indiscretion into which my folly, in still believing that this thing could be settled amicably, has led me.”

He bowed coldly and withdrew. Nevertheless, as he mounted his horse and rode away, he felt his cheeks burning. Yet he had acted upon calm consideration; he knew that to the ordinary Californian experience there was nothing quixotic nor exaggerated in the attitude he had taken. Men had quarreled and fought on less grounds; he had even half convinced himself that he HAD been insulted, and that his own professional reputation demanded the withdrawal of the attack on Harcourt on purely business grounds; but he was not satisfied of the personal responsibility of Fletcher nor of his gratuitous malignity. Nor did the man look like a tool in the hands of some unscrupulous and hidden enemy. However, he had played his card. If he succeeded only in provoking a duel with Fletcher, he at least would divert the public attention from Harcourt to himself. He knew that his superior position would throw the lesser victim in the background. He would make the sacrifice; that was his duty as a gentleman, even if SHE would not care to accept it as an earnest of his unselfish love!

He had reached the point where the mountain track entered the Santa Clara turnpike when his attention was attracted by a handsome but old-fashioned carriage drawn by four white mules, which passed down the road before him and turned suddenly off into a private road. But it was not this picturesque gala equipage of some local Spanish grandee that brought a thrill to his nerves and a flash to his eye; it was the unmistakable, tall, elegant figure and handsome profile of Clementina, reclining in light gauzy wraps against the back seat! It was no fanciful resemblance, the outcome of his reverie,– there never was any one like her!–it WAS she herself! But what was she doing here?

A vaquero cantered from the cross road where the dust of the vehicle still hung. Grant hailed him. Ah! it was a fine carroza de cuatro mulas that he had just passed! Si, Senor, truly; it was of Don Jose Ramirez, who lived just under the hill. It was bringing company to the casa.

Ramirez! That was where Fletcher was going! Had Clementina known that he was one of Fletcher’s friends? Might she not be exposed to unpleasantness, marked coolness, or even insult in that unexpected meeting? Ought she not to be warned or prepared for it? She had banished Grant from her presence until this stain was removed from her father’s name, but could she blame him for trying to save her from contact with her father’s slanderer? No! He turned his horse abruptly into the cross road and spurred forward in the direction of the casa.

It was quite visible now–a low-walled, quadrangular mass of whitewashed adobe lying like a drift on the green hillside. The carriage and four had far preceded him, and was already half up the winding road towards the house. Later he saw them reach the courtyard and disappear within. He would be quite in time to speak with her before she retired to change her dress. He would simply say that while making a professional visit to Los Gatos Land Company office he had become aware of Fletcher’s connection with it, and accidentally of his intended visit to Ramirez. His chance meeting with the carriage on the highway had determined his course.

As he rode into the courtyard he observed that it was also approached by another road, evidently nearer Los Gatos, and probably the older and shorter communication between the two ranchos. The fact was significantly demonstrated a moment later. He had given his horse to a servant, sent in his card to Clementina, and had dropped listlessly on one of the benches of the gallery surrounding the patio, when a horseman rode briskly into the opposite gateway, and dismounted with a familiar air. A waiting peon who recognized him informed him that the Dona was engaged with a visitor, but that they were both returning to the gallery for chocolate in a moment. The stranger was the man he had left only an hour before–Don Diego Fletcher!

In an instant the idiotic fatuity of his position struck him fully. His only excuse for following Clementina had been to warn her of the coming of this man who had just entered, and who would now meet her as quickly as himself. For a brief moment the idea of quietly slipping out to the corral, mounting his horse again, and flying from the rancho, crossed his mind; but the thought that he would be running away from the man he had just challenged, and perhaps some new hostility that had sprung up in his heart against him, compelled him to remain. The eyes of both men met; Fletcher’s in half-wondering annoyance, Grant’s in ill-concealed antagonism. What they would have said is not known, for at that moment the voices of Clementina and Mrs. Ramirez were heard in the passage, and they both entered the gallery. The two men were standing together; it was impossible to see one without the other.

And yet Grant, whose eyes were instantly directed to Clementina, thought that she had noted neither. She remained for an instant standing in the doorway in the same self-possessed, coldly graceful pose he remembered she had taken on the platform at Tasajara. Her eyelids were slightly downcast, as if she had been arrested by some sudden thought or some shy maiden sensitiveness; in her hesitation Mrs. Ramirez passed impatiently before her.

“Mother of God!” said that lively lady, regarding the two speechless men, “is it an indiscretion we are making here–or are you dumb? You, Don Diego, are loud enough when you and Don Jose are together; at least introduce your friend.”

Grant quickly recovered himself. “I am afraid,” he said, coming forward, “unless Miss Harcourt does, that I am a mere trespasser in your house, Senora. I saw her pass in your carriage a few moments ago, and having a message for her I ventured to follow her here.”

“It is Mr. Grant, a friend of my father’s,” said Clementina, smiling with equanimity, as if just awakening from a momentary abstraction, yet apparently unconscious of Grant’s imploring eyes; “but the other gentleman I have not the pleasure of knowing.”

“Ah! Don Diego Fletcher, a countryman of yours; and yet I think he knows you not.”

Clementina’s face betrayed no indication of the presence of her father’s foe, and yet Grant knew that she must have recognized his name, as she looked towards Fletcher with perfect self-possession. He was too much engaged in watching her to take note of Fletcher’s manifest disturbance, or the evident effort with which he at last bowed to her. That this unexpected double meeting with the daughter of the man he had wronged, and the man who had espoused the quarrel, should be confounding to him appeared only natural. But he was unprepared to understand the feverish alacrity with which he accepted Dona Maria’s invitation to chocolate, or the equally animated way in which Clementina threw herself into her hostess’s Spanish levity. He knew it was an awkward situation, that must be surmounted without a scene; he was quite prepared in the presence of Clementina to be civil to Fletcher; but it was odd that in this feverish exchange of courtesies and compliments HE, Grant, should feel the greater awkwardness and be the most ill at ease. He sat down and took his part in the conversation; he let it transpire for Clementina’s benefit that he had been to Los Gatos only on business, yet there was no opportunity for even a significant glance, and he had the added embarrassment of seeing that she exhibited no surprise nor seemed to attach the least importance to his inopportune visit. In a miserable indecision he allowed himself to be carried away by the high-flown hospitality of his Spanish hostess, and consented to stay to an early dinner. It was part of the infelicity of circumstance that the voluble Dona Maria–electing him as the distinguished stranger above the resident Fletcher–monopolized him and attached him to her side. She would do the honors of her house; she must show him the ruins of the old Mission beside the corral; Don Diego and Clementina would join them presently in the garden. He cast a despairing glance at the placidly smiling Clementina, who was apparently equally indifferent to the evident constraint and assumed ease of the man beside her, and turned away with Mrs. Ramirez.

A silence fell upon the gallery so deep that the receding voices and footsteps of Grant and his hostess in the long passage were distinctly heard until they reached the end. Then Fletcher arose with an inarticulate exclamation. Clementina instantly put her finger to her lips, glanced around the gallery, extended her hand to him, and saying “Come,” half-led, half-dragged him into the passage. To the right she turned and pushed open the door of a small room that seemed a combination of boudoir and oratory, lit by a French window opening to the garden, and flanked by a large black and white crucifix with a prie Dieu beneath it. Closing the door behind them she turned and faced her companion. But it was no longer the face of the woman who had been sitting in the gallery; it was the face that had looked back at her from the mirror at Tasajara the night that Grant had left her–eager, flushed, material with commonplace excitement!

“‘Lige Curtis,” she said.

“Yes,” he answered passionately, “Lige Curtis, whom you thought dead! ‘Lige Curtis, whom you once pitied, condoled with and despised! ‘Lige Curtis, whose lands and property have enriched you! ‘Lige Curtis, who would have shared it with you freely at the time, but whom your father juggled and defrauded of it! ‘Lige Curtis, branded by him as a drunken outcast and suicide! ‘Lige Curtis”–

“Hush!” She clapped her little hand over his mouth with a quick but awkward schoolgirl gesture, inconceivable to any who had known her usual languid elegance of motion, and held it there. He struggled angrily, impatiently, reproachfully, and then, with a sudden characteristic weakness that seemed as much of a revelation as her once hoydenish manner, kissed it, when she let it drop. Then placing both her hands still girlishly on her slim waist and curtseying grotesquely before him, she said: “‘Lige Curtis! Oh, yes! ‘Lige Curtis, who swore to do everything for me! ‘Lige Curtis, who promised to give up liquor for me,–who was to leave Tasajara for me! ‘Lige Curtis, who was to reform, and keep his land as a nest-egg for us both in the future, and then who sold it– and himself–and me–to dad for a glass of whiskey! ‘Lige Curtis, who disappeared, and then let us think he was dead, only that he might attack us out of the ambush of his grave!”

“Yes, but think what I have suffered all these years; not for the cursed land–you know I never cared for that–but for YOU,–you, Clementina,–YOU rich, admired by every one; idolized, held far above me,–ME, the forgotten outcast, the wretched suicide–and yet the man to whom you had once plighted your troth. Which of those greedy fortune-hunters whom my money–my life-blood as you might have thought it was–attracted to you, did you care to tell that you had ever slipped out of the little garden gate at Sidon to meet that outcast! Do you wonder that as the years passed and YOU were happy, I did not choose to be so forgotten? Do you wonder that when YOU shut the door on the past I managed to open it again–if only a little way–that its light might startle you?”

Yet she did not seem startled or disturbed, and remained only looking at him critically.

“You say that you have suffered,” she replied with a smile. “You don’t look it! Your hair is white, but it is becoming to you, and you are a handsomer man, ‘Lige Curtis, than you were when I first met you; you are finer,” she went on, still regarding him, “stronger and healthier than you were five years ago; you are rich and prosperous, you have everything to make you happy, but”–here she laughed a little, held out both her hands, taking his and holding his arms apart in a rustic, homely fashion–“but you are still the same old ‘Lige Curtis! It was like you to go off and hide yourself in that idiotic way; it was like you to let the property slide in that stupid, unselfish fashion; it was like you to get real mad, and say all those mean, silly things to dad, that didn’t hurt him–in your regular looney style; for rich or poor, drunk or sober, ragged or elegant, plain or handsome,–you’re always the same ‘Lige Curtis!”

In proportion as that material, practical, rustic self–which nobody but ‘Lige Curtis had ever seen–came back to her, so in proportion the irresolute, wavering, weak and emotional vagabond of Sidon came out to meet it. He looked at her with a vague smile; his five years of childish resentment, albeit carried on the shoulders of a man mentally and morally her superior, melted away. He drew her towards him, yet at the same moment a quick suspicion returned.

“Well, and what are you doing here? Has this man who has followed you any right, any claim upon you?”

“None but what you in your folly have forced upon him! You have made him father’s ally. I don’t know why he came here. I only know why I did–to find YOU!”

“You suspected then?”

“I KNEW! Hush!”

The returning voices of Grant and of Mrs. Ramirez were heard in the courtyard. Clementina made a warning yet girlishly mirthful gesture, again caught his hand, drew him quickly to the French window, and slipped through it with him into the garden, where they were quickly lost in the shadows of a ceanothus hedge.

“They have probably met Don Jose in the orchard, and as he and Don Diego have business together, Dona Clementina has without doubt gone to her room and left them. For you are not very entertaining to the ladies to-day,–you two caballeros! You have much politics together, eh?–or you have discussed and disagreed, eh? I will look for the Senorita, and let you go, Don Distraido!”

It is to be feared that Grant’s apologies and attempts to detain her were equally feeble,–as it seemed to him that this was the only chance he might have of seeing Clementina except in company with Fletcher. As Mrs. Ramirez left he lit a cigarette and listlessly walked up and down the gallery. But Clementina did not come, neither did his hostess return. A subdued step in the passage raised his hopes,–it was only the grizzled major domo, to show him his room that he might prepare for dinner.

He followed mechanically down the long passage to a second corridor. There was a chance that he might meet Clementina, but he reached his room without encountering any one. It was a large vaulted apartment with a single window, a deep embrasure in the thick wall that seemed to focus like a telescope some forgotten, sequestered part of the leafy garden. While washing his hands, gazing absently at the green vignette framed by the dark opening, his attention was drawn to a movement of the foliage, stirred apparently by the rapid passage of two half-hidden figures. The quick flash of a feminine skirt seemed to indicate the coy flight of some romping maid of the casa, and the pursuit and struggle of her vaquero swain. To a despairing lover even the spectacle of innocent, pastoral happiness in others is not apt to be soothing, and Grant was turning impatiently away when he suddenly stopped with a rigid face and quickly approached the window. In her struggles with the unseen Corydon, the clustering leaves seemed to have yielded at the same moment with the coy Chloris, and parting– disclosed a stolen kiss! Grant’s hand lay like ice against the wall. For, disengaging Fletcher’s arm from her waist and freeing her skirt from the foliage, it was the calm, passionless Clementina herself who stepped out, and moved pensively towards the casa.

CHAPTER XI.

“Readers of the ‘Clarion’ will have noticed that allusion has been frequently made in these columns to certain rumors concerning the early history of Tasajara which were supposed to affect the pioneer record of Daniel Harcourt. It was deemed by the conductors of this journal to be only consistent with the fearless and independent duty undertaken by the ‘Clarion’ that these rumors should be fully chronicled as part of the information required by the readers of a first-class newspaper, unbiased by any consideration of the social position of the parties, but simply as a matter of news. For this the ‘Clarion’ does not deem it necessary to utter a word of apology. But for that editorial comment or attitude which the proprietors felt was justified by the reliable sources of their information they now consider it only due in honor to themselves, their readers, and Mr. Harcourt to fully and freely apologize. A patient and laborious investigation enables them to state that the alleged facts published by the ‘Clarion’ and copied by other journals are utterly unsupported by testimony, and the charges– although more or less vague–which were based upon them are equally untenable. We are now satisfied that one ‘Elijah Curtis,’ a former pioneer of Tasajara who disappeared five years ago, and was supposed to be drowned, has not only made no claim to the Tasajara property, as alleged, but has given no sign of his equally alleged resuscitation and present existence, and that on the minutest investigation there appears nothing either in his disappearance, or the transfer of his property to Daniel Harcourt, that could in any way disturb the uncontested title to Tasajara or the unimpeachable character of its present owner. The whole story now seems to have been the outcome of one of those stupid rural hoaxes too common in California.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Ashwood, laying aside the ‘Clarion’ with a skeptical shrug of her pretty shoulders, as she glanced up at her brother; “I suppose this means that you are going to propose again to the young lady?”

“I have,” said Jack Shipley, “that’s the worst of it–and got my answer before this came out.”

“Jack!” said Mrs. Ashwood, thoroughly surprised.

“Yes! You see, Conny, as I told you three weeks ago, she said she wanted time to consider,–that she scarcely knew me, and all that! Well, I thought it wasn’t exactly a gentleman’s business to seem to stand off after that last attack on her father, and so, last week, I went down to San Jose, where she was staying, and begged her not to keep me in suspense. And, by Jove! she froze me with a look, and said that with these aspersions on her father’s character, she preferred not to be under obligations to any one.”

“And you believed her?”

“Oh, hang it all! Look here, Conny,–I wish you’d just try for once to find out some good in that family, besides what that sentimental young widower John Milton may have. You seem to think because they’ve quarreled with HIM there isn’t a virtue left among them.”

Far from seeming to offer any suggestion of feminine retaliation, Mrs. Ashwood smiled sweetly. “My dear Jack, I have no desire to keep you from trying your luck again with Miss Clementina, if that’s what you mean, and indeed I shouldn’t be surprised if a family who felt a mesalliance as sensitively as the Harcourts felt that affair of their son’s, would be as keenly alive to the advantages of a good match for their daughter. As to young Mr. Harcourt, he never talked to me of the vices of his family, nor has he lately troubled me much with the presence of his own virtues. I haven’t heard from him since we came here.”

“I suppose he is satisfied with the government berth you got for him,” returned her brother dryly.

“He was very grateful to Senator Flynn, who appreciates his talents, but who offered it to him as a mere question of fitness,” replied Mrs. Ashwood with great precision of statement. “But you don’t seem to know he declined it on account of his other work.”

“Preferred his old Bohemian ways, eh? You can’t change those fellows, Conny. They can’t get over the fascinations of vagabondage. Sorry your lady-patroness scheme didn’t work. Pity you couldn’t have promoted him in the line of his profession, as the Grand Duchess of Girolstein did Fritz.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Jack, go to Clementina! You may not be successful, but there at least the perfect gentlemanliness and good taste of your illustrations will not be thrown away.”

“I think of going to San Francisco tomorrow, anyway,” returned Jack with affected carelessness. “I’m getting rather bored with this wild seaside watering place and its glitter of ocean and hopeless background of mountain. It’s nothing to me that ‘there’s no land nearer than Japan’ out there. It may be very healthful to the tissues, but it’s weariness to the spirit, and I don’t see why we can’t wait at San Francisco till the rains send us further south, as well as here.”

He had walked to the balcony of their sitting-room in the little seaside hotel where this conversation took place, and gazed discontentedly over the curving bay and sandy shore before him. After a slight pause Mrs. Ashwood stepped out beside him.

“Very likely I may go with you,” she said, with a perceptible tone of weariness. “We will see after the post arrives.”

“By the way, there is a little package for you in my room, that came this morning. I brought it up, but forgot to give it to you. You’ll find it on my table.”

Mrs. Ashwood abstractedly turned away and entered her brother’s room from the same balcony. The forgotten parcel, which looked like a roll of manuscript, was lying on his dressing-table. She gazed attentively at the handwriting on the wrapper and then gave a quick glance around her. A sudden and subtle change came over her. She neither flushed nor paled, nor did the delicate lines of expression in her face quiver or change. But as she held the parcel in her hand her whole being seemed to undergo some exquisite suffusion. As the medicines which the Arabian physician had concealed in the hollow handle of the mallet permeated the languid royal blood of Persia, so some volatile balm of youth seemed to flow in upon her with the contact of that strange missive and transform her weary spirit.

“Jack!” she called, in a high clear voice. But Jack had already gone from the balcony when she reached it with an elastic step and a quick youthful swirl and rustling of her skirt. He was lighting his cigar in the garden.

“Jack,” she said, leaning half over the railing, “come back here in an hour and we’ll talk over that matter of yours again.”

Jack looked up eagerly and as if he might even come up then, but she added quickly, “In about an hour–I must think it over,” and withdrew.

She re-entered the sitting-room, shut the door carefully and locked it, half pulled down the blind, walking once or twice around the table on which the parcel lay, with one eye on it like a graceful cat. Then she suddenly sat down, took it up with a grave practical face, examined the postmark curiously, and opened it with severe deliberation. It contained a manuscript and a letter of four closely written pages. She glanced at the manuscript with bright approving eyes, ran her fingers through its leaves and then laid it carefully and somewhat ostentatiously on the table beside her. Then, still holding the letter in her hand, she rose and glanced out of the window at her bored brother lounging towards the beach and at the heaving billows beyond, and returned to her seat. This apparently important preliminary concluded, she began to read.

There were, as already stated, four blessed pages of it! All vital, earnest, palpitating with youthful energy, preposterous in premises, precipitate in conclusions,–yet irresistible and convincing to every woman in their illogical sincerity. There was not a word of love in it, yet every page breathed a wholesome adoration; there was not an epithet or expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objected to, yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress. There was not a line of poetry in it, and scarcely a figure or simile, and yet it was poetical. Boyishly egotistic as it was in attitude, it seemed to be written less OF himself than TO her; in its delicate because unconscious flattery, it made her at once the provocation and excuse. And yet so potent was its individuality that it required no signature. No one but John Milton Harcourt could have written it. His personality stood out of it so strongly that once or twice Mrs. Ashwood almost unconsciously put up her little hand before her face with a half mischievous, half-deprecating smile, as if the big honest eyes of its writer were upon her.

It began by an elaborate apology for declining the appointment offered him by one of her friends, which he was bold enough to think had been prompted by her kind heart. That was like her, but yet what she might do to any one; and he preferred to think of her as the sweet and gentle lady who had recognized his merit without knowing him, rather than the powerful and gracious benefactress who wanted to reward him when she did know him. The crown that she had all unconsciously placed upon his head that afternoon at the little hotel at Crystal Spring was more to him than the Senator’s appointment; perhaps he was selfish, but he could not bear that she who had given so much should believe that he could accept a lesser gift. All this and much more! Some of it he had wanted to say to her in San Francisco at times when they had met, but he could not find the words. But she had given him the courage to go on and do the only thing he was fit for, and he had resolved to stick to that, and perhaps do something once more that might make him hear again her voice as he had heard it that day, and again see the light that had shone in her eyes as she sat there and read. And this was why he was sending her a manuscript. She might have forgotten that she had told him a strange story of her cousin who had disappeared–which she thought he might at some time work up. Here it was. Perhaps she might not recognize it again, in the way he had written it here; perhaps she did not really mean it when she had given him permission to use it, but he remembered her truthful eyes and believed her–and in any event it was hers to do with what she liked. It had been a great pleasure for him to write it and think that she would see it; it was like seeing her himself–that was in HIS BETTER SELF–more worthy the companionship of a beautiful and noble woman than the poor young man she would have helped. This was why he had not called the week before she went away. But for all that, she had made his life less lonely, and he should be ever grateful to her. He could never forget how she unconsciously sympathized with him that day over the loss that had blighted his life forever,–yet even then he did not know that she, herself, had passed through the same suffering. But just here the stricken widow of thirty, after a vain attempt to keep up the knitted gravity of her eyebrows, bowed her dimpling face over the letter of the blighted widower of twenty, and laughed so long and silently that the tears stood out like dew on her light-brown eyelashes.

But she became presently severe again, and finished her reading of the letter gravely. Then she folded it carefully, deposited it in a box on her table, which she locked. After a few minutes, however, she unlocked the box again and transferred the letter to her pocket. The serenity of her features did not relax again, although her previous pretty prepossession of youthful spirit was still indicated in her movements. Going into her bedroom, she reappeared in a few minutes with a light cloak thrown over her shoulders and a white-trimmed broad-brimmed hat. Then she rolled up the manuscript in a paper, and called her French maid. As she stood there awaiting her with the roll in her hand, she might have been some young girl on her way to her music lesson.

“If my brother returns before I do, tell him to wait.”

“Madame is going”–

“Out,” said Mrs. Ashwood blithely, and tripped downstairs.

She made her way directly to the shore where she remembered there was a group of rocks affording a shelter from the northwest trade winds. It was reached at low water by a narrow ridge of sand, and here she had often basked in the sun with her book. It was here that she now unrolled John Milton’s manuscript and read.

It was the story she had told him, but interpreted by his poetry and adorned by his fancy until the facts as she remembered them seemed to be no longer hers, or indeed truths at all. She had always believed her cousin’s unhappy temperament to have been the result of a moral and physical idiosyncrasy,–she found it here to be the effect of a lifelong and hopeless passion for herself! The ingenious John Milton had given a poet’s precocity to the youth whom she had only known as a suspicious, moody boy, had idealized him as a sensitive but songless Byron, had given him the added infirmity of pulmonary weakness, and a handkerchief that in moments of great excitement, after having been hurriedly pressed to his pale lips, was withdrawn “with a crimson stain.” Opposed to this interesting figure–the more striking to her as she had been hitherto haunted by the impression that her cousin during his boyhood had been subject to facial eruption and boils–was her own equally idealized self. Cruelly kind to her cousin and gentle with his weaknesses while calmly ignoring their cause, leading him unconsciously step by step in his fatal passion, he only became aware by accident that she nourished an ideal hero in the person of a hard, proud, middle-aged practical man of the world,–her future husband! At this picture of the late Mr. Ashwood, who had really been an indistinctive social bon vivant, his amiable relict grew somewhat hysterical. The discovery of her real feelings drove the consumptive cousin into a secret, self-imposed exile on the shores of the Pacific, where he hoped to find a grave. But the complete and sudden change of life and scene, the balm of the wild woods and the wholesome barbarism of nature, wrought a magical change in his physical health and a philosophical rest in his mind. He married the daughter of an Indian chief. Years passed, the heroine–a rich and still young and beautiful widow–unwittingly sought the same medicinal solitude. Here in the depth of the forest she encountered her former playmate; the passion which he had fondly supposed was dead revived in her presence, and for the first time she learned from his bearded lips the secret of his passion. Alas! not SHE alone! The contiguous forest could not be bolted out, and the Indian wife heard all. Recognizing the situation with aboriginal directness of purpose, she committed suicide in the fond belief that it would reunite the survivors. But in vain; the cousins parted on the spot to meet no more.

Even Mrs. Ashwood’s predilection for the youthful writer could not overlook the fact that the denouement was by no means novel nor the situation human, but yet it was here that she was most interested and fascinated. The description of the forest was a description of the wood where she had first met Harcourt; the charm of it returned, until she almost seemed to again inhale its balsamic freshness in the pages before her. Now, as then, her youth came back with the same longing and regret. But more bewildering than all, it was herself that moved there, painted with the loving hand of the narrator. For the first time she experienced the delicious flattery of seeing herself as only a lover could see her. The smallest detail of her costume was suggested with an accuracy that pleasantly thrilled her feminine sense. The grace of her figure slowly moving through the shadow, the curves of her arm and the delicacy of her hand that held the bridle rein, the gentle glow of her softly rounded cheek, the sweet mystery of her veiled eyes and forehead, and the escaping gold of her lovely hair beneath her hat were all in turn masterfully touched or tenderly suggested. And when to this was added the faint perfume of her nearer presence– the scent she always used–the delicate revelations of her withdrawn gauntlet, the bracelet clasping her white wrist, and at last the thrilling contact of her soft hand on his arm,–she put down the manuscript and blushed like a very girl. Then she started.

A shout!–HIS voice surely!–and the sound of oars in their rowlocks.

An instant revulsion of feeling overtook her. With a quick movement she instantly hid the manuscript beneath her cloak and stood up erect and indignant. Not twenty yards away, apparently advancing from the opposite shore of the bay, was a boat. It contained only John Milton, resting on his oars and scanning the group of rocks anxiously. His face, which was quite strained with anxiety, suddenly flushed when he saw her, and then recognizing the unmistakable significance of her look and attitude, paled once more. He bent over his oars again; a few strokes brought him close to the rock.

“I beg your pardon,” he said hesitatingly, as he turned towards her and laid aside his oars, “but–I thought–you were–in danger.”

She glanced quickly round her. She had forgotten the tide! The ledge between her and the shore was already a foot under brown sea- water. Yet if she had not thought that it would look ridiculous, she would have leaped down even then and waded ashore.

“It’s nothing,” she said coldly, with the air of one to whom the situation was an everyday occurrence; “it’s only a few steps and a slight wetting–and my brother would have been here in a moment more.”

John Milton’s frank eyes made no secret of his mortification. “I ought not to have disturbed you, I know,” he said quickly, “I had no right. But I was on the other shore opposite and I saw you come down here–that is”–he blushed prodigiously–“I thought it MIGHT BE you–and I ventured–I mean–won’t you let me row you ashore?”

There seemed to be no reasonable excuse for refusing. She slipped quickly into the boat without waiting for his helping hand, avoiding that contact which only a moment ago she was trying to recall.

A few strokes brought them ashore. He continued his explanation with the hopeless frankness and persistency of youth and inexperience. “I only came here the day before yesterday. I would not have come, but Mr. Fletcher, who has a cottage on the other shore, sent for me to offer me my old place on the ‘Clarion.’ I had no idea of intruding upon your privacy by calling here without permission.”

Mrs. Ashwood had resumed her conventional courtesy without however losing her feminine desire to make her companion pay for the agitation he had caused her. “We would have been always pleased to see you,” she said vaguely, “and I hope, as you are here now, you will come with me to the hotel. My brother”–

But he still retained his hold of the boat-rope without moving, and continued, “I saw you yesterday, through the telescope, sitting in your balcony; and later at night I think it was your shadow I saw near the blue shaded lamp in the sitting-room by the window,–I don’t mean the RED LAMP that you have in your own room. I watched you until you put out the blue lamp and lit the red one. I tell you this–because–because–I thought you might be reading a manuscript I sent you. At least,” he smiled faintly, “I LIKED to think it so.”

In her present mood this struck her only as persistent and somewhat egotistical. But she felt herself now on ground where she could deal firmly with him.

“Oh, yes,” she said gravely. “I got it and thank you very much for it. I intended to write to you.”

“Don’t,” he said, looking at her fixedly. “I can see you don’t like it.”

“On the contrary,” she said promptly, “I think it beautifully written, and very ingenious in plot and situation. Of course it isn’t the story I told you–I didn’t expect that, for I’m not a genius. The man is not at all like my cousin, you know, and the woman–well really, to tell the truth, SHE is simply inconceivable!”

“You think so?” he said gravely. He had been gazing abstractedly at some shining brown seaweed in the water, and when he raised his eyes to hers they seemed to have caught its color.

“Think so? I’m positive! There’s no such a woman; she isn’t HUMAN. But let us walk to the hotel.”

“Thank you, but I must go back now.”

“But at least let my brother thank you for taking his place–in rescuing me. It was so thoughtful in you to put off at once when you saw I was surrounded. I might have been in great danger.”

“Please don’t make fun of me, Mrs. Ashwood,” he said with a faint return of his boyish smile. “You know there was no danger. I have only interrupted you in a nap or a reverie–and I can see now that you evidently came here to be alone.”

Holding the manuscript more closely hidden under the folds of her cloak, she smiled enigmatically. “I think I DID, and it seems that the tide thought so too, and acted upon it. But you will come up to the hotel with me, surely?”

“No, I am going back now.” There was a sudden firmness about the young fellow which she had never before noticed. This was evidently the creature who had married in spite of his family.

“Won’t you come back long enough to take your manuscript? I will point out the part I refer to, and–we will talk it over.”

“There is no necessity. I wrote to you that you might keep it; it is yours; it was written for you and none other. It is quite enough for me to know that you were good enough to read it. But will you do one thing more for me? Read it again! If you find anything in it the second time to change your views–if you find”–

“I will let you know,” she said quickly. “I will write to you as I intended.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant that if you found the woman less inconceivable and more human, don’t write to me, but put your red lamp in your window instead of the blue one. I will watch for it and see it.”

“I think I will be able to explain myself much better with simple pen and ink,” she said dryly, ” and it will be much more useful to you.”

He lifted his hat gravely, shoved off the boat, leaped into it, and before she could hold out her hand was twenty feet away. She turned and ran quickly up the rocks. When she reached the hotel, she could see the boat already half across the bay.

Entering her sitting-room she found that her brother, tired of waiting for her, had driven out. Taking the hidden manuscript from her cloak she tossed it with a slight gesture of impatience on the table. Then she summoned the landlord.

“Is there a town across the bay?”

“No! the whole mountain-side belongs to Don Diego Fletcher. He lives away back in the coast range at Los Gatos, but he has a cottage and mill on the beach.”

“Don Diego Fletcher–Fletcher! Is he a Spaniard then?”

“Half and half, I reckon; he’s from the lower country, I believe.”

“Is he here often?”

“Not much; he has mills at Los Gatos, wheat ranches at Santa Clara, and owns a newspaper in ‘Frisco! But he’s here now. There were lights in his house last night, and his cutter lies off the point.”

“Could you get a small package and note to him?”

“Certainly; it is only a row across the bay.”

“Thank you.”

Without removing her hat and cloak she sat down at the table and began a letter to Don Diego Fletcher. She begged to inclose to him a manuscript which she was satisfied, for the interests of its author, was better in his hands than hers. It had been given to her by the author, Mr. J. M. Harcourt, whom she understood was engaged on Mr. Fletcher’s paper, the “Clarion.” In fact, it had been written at HER suggestion, and from an incident in real life of which she was cognizant. She was sorry to say that on account of some very foolish criticism of her own as to the FACTS, the talented young author had become so dissatisfied with it as to make it possible that, if left to himself, this very charming and beautifully written story would remain unpublished. As an admirer of Mr. Harcourt’s genius, and a friend of his family, she felt that such an event would be deplorable, and she therefore begged to leave it to Mr. Fletcher’s delicacy and tact to arrange with the author for its publication. She knew that Mr. Fletcher had only to read it to be convinced of its remarkable literary merit, and she again would impress upon him the fact that her playful and thoughtless criticism–which was personal and confidential–was only based upon the circumstances that the author had really made a more beautiful and touching story than the poor facts which she had furnished seemed to warrant. She had only just learned the fortunate circumstance that Mr. Fletcher was in the neighborhood of the hotel where she was staying with her brother.

With the same practical, business-like directness, but perhaps a certain unbusiness-like haste superadded, she rolled up the manuscript and dispatched it with the letter.

This done, however, a slight reaction set in, and having taken off her hat and shawl, she dropped listlessly on a chair by the window, but as suddenly rose and took a seat in the darker part of the room. She felt that she had done right, that highest but most depressing of human convictions! It was entirely for his good. There was no reason why his best interests should suffer for his folly. If anybody was to suffer it was she. But what nonsense was she thinking! She would write to him later when she was a little cooler,–as she had said. But then he had distinctly told her, and very rudely too, that he didn’t want her to write. Wanted her to make SIGNALS to him,–the idiot! and probably was even now watching her with a telescope. It was really too preposterous!

The result was that her brother found her on his return in a somewhat uncertain mood, and, as a counselor, variable and conflicting in judgment. If this Clementina, who seemed to have the family qualities of obstinacy and audacity, really cared for him, she certainly wouldn’t let delicacy stand in the way of letting him know it–and he was therefore safe to wait a little. A few moments later, she languidly declared that she was afraid that she was no counselor in such matters; really she was getting too old to take any interest in that sort of thing, and she never had been a matchmaker! By the way now, wasn’t it odd that this neighbor, that rich capitalist across the bay, should be called Fletcher, and “James Fletcher” too, for Diego meant “James” in Spanish. Exactly the same name as poor “Cousin Jim” who disappeared. Did he remember her old playmate Jim? But her brother thought something else was a deuced sight more odd, namely, that this same Don Diego Fletcher was said to be very sweet on Clementina now, and was always in her company at the Ramirez. And that, with this “Clarion” apology on the top of it, looked infernally queer.

Mrs. Ashwood felt a sudden consternation. Here had she–Jack’s sister–just been taking Jack’s probable rival into confidential correspondence! She turned upon Jack sharply:–