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IV.

As Mrs. Tucker, erect, white, and rigid, drove away from the tienda, it seemed to her to sink again into the monotonous plain, with all its horrible realities. Except that there was now a new and heart-breaking significance to the solitude and loneliness of the landscape, all that had passed might have been a dream. But as the blood came back to her cheek, and little by little her tingling consciousness returned, it seemed as if her life had been the dream, and this last scene the awakening reality. With eyes smarting with the moisture of shame, the scarlet blood at times dyeing her very neck and temples, she muffled her lowered crest in her shawl and bent over the reins. Bit by bit she recalled, in Poindexter’s mysterious caution and strange allusions, the corroboration of her husband’s shame and her own disgrace. This was why she was brought hither–the deserted wife, the abandoned confederate! The mocking glitter of the concave vault above her, scoured by the incessant wind, the cold stare of the shining pools beyond, the hard outlines of the Coast Range, and the jarring accompaniment of her horse’s hoofs and rattling buggy-wheels, alternately goaded and distracted her. She found herself repeating “No! no! no!” with the dogged reiteration of fever. She scarcely knew when or how she reached the hacienda. She was only conscious that as she entered the patio the dusky solitude that had before filled her with unrest now came to her like balm. A benumbing peace seemed to fall from the crumbling walls; the peace of utter seclusion, isolation, oblivion, death! Nevertheless, an hour later, when the jingle of spurs and bridle were again heard in the road, she started to her feet with bent brows and a kindling eye, and confronted Captain Poindexter in the corridor.

“I would not have intruded upon you so soon again,” he said gravely, “but I thought I might perhaps spare you a repetition of the scene of this morning. Hear me out, please,” he added, with a gentle, half deprecating gesture, as she lifted the beautiful scorn of her eyes to his. “I have just heard that your neighbor, Don Jose Santierra, of Los Gatos, is on his way to this house. He once claimed this land, and hated your husband, who bought of the rival claimant, whose grant was confirmed. I tell you this,” he added, slightly flushing as Mrs. Tucker turned impatiently away, “only to show you that legally he has no rights, and you need not see him unless you choose. I could not stop his coming without perhaps doing you more harm than good; but when he does come, my presence under this roof as your legal counsel will enable you to refer him to me.” He stopped. She was pacing the corridor with short, impatient steps, her arms dropped, and her hands clasped rigidly before her. “Have I your permission to stay?”

She suddenly stopped in her walk, approached him rapidly, and fixing her eyes on his, said:

“Do I know all, now–everything?”

He could only reply that she had not yet told him what she had heard.

“Well,” she said scornfully, “that my husband has been cruelly imposed upon–imposed upon by some wretched woman, who has made him sacrifice his property, his friends, his honor–everything but me!”

“Everything but whom?” gasped Poindexter.

“But ME!”

Poindexter gazed at the sky, the air, the deserted corridor, the stones of the patio itself, and then at the inexplicable woman before him. Then he said gravely, “I think you know everything.”

“Then if my husband has left me all he could–this property,” she went on rapidly, twisting her handkerchief between her fingers, “I can do with it what I like, can’t I?”

“You certainly can.”

“Then sell it,” she said, with passionate vehemence. “Sell it–all! everything! And sell these.” She darted into her bedroom, and returned with the diamond rings she had torn from her fingers and ears when she entered the house. “Sell them for anything they’ll bring, only sell them at once.”