Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/42

36 the right with the trail that wound toward Gabriel's hut and the cottage beyond, and Victor breathed, or rather panted, more freely. And then a voice at his very side thrilled him to his smallest fiber, and he turned quickly. It was Mrs. Conroy, white, erect, and truculent. "What are you doing here?" she said, with a sharp, quick utterance. "Hush!" said Ramirez, trembling with the passion called up by the figure before him. "Hush! There is one who has just come up the trail." "What do I care who hears me now? You have made caution unnecessary," she responded sharply. "All the world knows us now! and so I ask you again, what are you doing here?" He would have approached her nearer, but she drew back, twitching her long white skirt behind her with a single quick feminine motion of her hand as if to save it from contamination. Victor laughed uneasily. "You have come to keep your appointment; it is not my fault if I am late." "I have come here because, for the last half-hour I have watched you from my veranda, coursing in and out among the tree like a hound as you are! I have come to whip you off my land as I would a hound. But I have first a word or two to say to you as the man you have assumed to be." Standing there with the sunset glow over her erect, graceful figure, in the pink flush of her cheek, in the cold fires of her eyes, in all the thousand nameless magnetisms of her presence, there was so much of her old power over this slave of passion, that the scorn of her words touched him only to inflame him, and he would have groveled at her feet could he have touched the thin three fingers that she warningly waved at him. "You wrong me, Julie, by the God of Heaven. I was wild, mad, this morning—you understand; for when I came to you I found you with another! I had reason, Mother of God!—I had reason for my madness, reason enough, but I came in peace, Julie, I came in peace!"

"In peace," returned Mrs. Conroy scornfully; "your note was a peaceful one, indeed!" "Ah! but I knew not how else to make you hear me. I had news—news you understand, news that might save you, for I came from the woman who holds the grant. Ah! you will listen, will you not? For one moment only, Julie, hear me and I am gone!"

Mrs. Conroy, with abstracted gaze, leaned against the tree. "Go on," she said coldly. "Ah you will listen, then!" said Victor joyfully, "and when you have listened you shall understand! Well, first I have the fact that the lawyer for this woman is the man who deserted the Grace Conroy in the mountains, the man who was called Philip Ashley, but whose real name is Poinsett." "Who did you say?" said Mrs. Conroy, suddenly stepping from the tree, and fixing a pair of cruel eyes on Ramirez. "Arthur Poinsett—an ex-soldier, an officer. Ah, you do not believe—I swear it is so!" "What has this to do with me?" she said scornfully, resuming her position beside the pine. "Go on—or is this all?" "No, but it is much. Look you! he is the affianced of a rich widow in the Southern Country, you understand? No one knows his past. Ah, you begin to comprehend. He does not dare to seek out the real Grace Conroy. He shall not dare to press the claim of his client. Consequently he does nothing!" "Is this all your news?" "All!—ah no. There is one more, but I dare not speak it here," he said, glancing craftily around through the slowly darkening wood. "Then it must remain untold," returned Mrs. Conroy, coldly, "for this is our last and only interview." "But Julie!—"

"Have you done?" she continued, in the same tone. Whether her indifference was assumed or not, it was effective. Ramirez glanced again quickly around, and then said, sulkily: "Come nearer and I will tell you. Ah, you doubt—you doubt? Be it so." But seeing that she did not move, he drew toward the tree and whispered, "Bend here your head—I will whisper it." Mrs. Conroy, evading his outstretched hand, bent her head. He whispered a few words in her ear that were inaudible a foot from the tree. " Did you tell this to him—to Gabriel?" she asked, fixing her eyes upon him, yet without change in her frigid demeanor. "No!—I swear to you, Julie, no! I would not have told him anything, but I was wild, crazy. And he was a brute, a great bear. He held me fast, here, so! I