FullReads

“Yes’m,” said Jane, apparently equally relieved. “Only, I thought I’d just tell you.”

A few minutes later, in crossing the upper hall, Mrs. Rylands heard Jane’s voice from the kitchen raised in rustic laughter. Had she been satirically inclined, she might have understood Jane’s willingness to relieve her mistress of the duty of entertaining the stranger; had she been philosophical, she might have considered the girl’s dreary, monotonous life at the rancho, and made allowance for her joy at this rare interruption of it. But I fear that Mrs. Rylands was neither satirical nor philosophical, and presently, when Jane reentered, with color in her alkaline face, and light in her huckleberry eyes, and said she was going over to the cattle-sheds in the “far pasture,” to see if the hired man didn’t know of some horse that could be got for the stranger, Mrs. Rylands felt a little bitterness in the thought that the girl would have scarcely volunteered to go all that distance in the rain for HER. Yet, in a few moments she forgot all about it, and even the presence of her guest in the house, and in one of her fitful abstracted employments passed through the dining-room into the kitchen, and had opened the door with an “Oh, Jane!” before she remembered her absence.

The kitchen, lit by a single candle, could be only partly seen by her as she stood with her hand on the lock, although she herself was plainly visible. There was a pause, and then a quiet, self-possessed, yet amused, voice answered:–

“My name isn’t Jane, and if you’re the lady of the house, I reckon yours wasn’t ALWAYS Rylands.”

At the sound of the voice Mrs. Rylands threw the door wide open, and as her eyes fell upon the speaker–her unknown guest–she recoiled with a little cry, and a white, startled face. Yet the stranger was young and handsome, dressed with a scrupulousness and elegance which even the stress of travel had not deranged, and he was looking at her with a smile of recognition, mingled with that careless audacity and self-possession which seemed to be the characteristic of his face.

“Jack Hamlin!” she gasped.

“That’s me, all the time,” he responded easily, “and YOU’RE Nell Montgomery!”

“How did you know I was here? Who told you?” she said impetuously.

“Nobody! never was so surprised in my life! When you opened that door just now you might have knocked me down with a feather.” Yet he spoke lazily, with an amused face, and looked at her without changing his position.

“But you MUST have known SOMETHING! It was no mere accident,” she went on vehemently, glancing around the room.

“That’s where you slip up, Nell,” said Hamlin imperturbably. “It WAS an accident and a bad one. My horse lamed himself coming down the grade. I sighted the nearest shanty, where I thought I might get another horse. It happened to be this.” For the first time he changed his attitude, and leaned back contemplatively in his chair.

She came towards him quickly. “You didn’t use to lie, Jack,” she said hesitatingly.

“Couldn’t afford it in my business,–and can’t now,” said Jack cheerfully. “But,” he added curiously, as if recognizing something in his companion’s agitation, and lifting his brown lashes to her, the window, and the ceiling, “what’s all this about? What’s your little game here?”

“I’m married,” she said, with nervous intensity,–“married, and this is my husband’s house!”

“Not married straight out!–regularly fixed?”

“Yes,” she said hurriedly.

“One of the boys? Don’t remember any Rylands. SPELTER used to be very sweet on you,–but Spelter mightn’t have been his real name?”

“None of our lot! No one you ever knew; a–a straight out, square man,” she said quickly.

“I say, Nell, look here! You ought to have shown up your cards without even a call. You ought to have told him that you danced at the Casino.”

“I did.”

“Before he asked you to marry him?”

“Before.”

Jack got up from his chair, put his hands in his pockets, and looked at her curiously. This Nell Montgomery, this music-hall “dance and song girl,” this girl of whom so much had been SAID and so little PROVED! Well, this was becoming interesting.