第33章

Since you followed ME to my house under the pretext of being my husband's friend, and forced me--yes, forced me--to see you secretly under my mother's roof? Did you think of compromising MEthen? Did you think of ruining my reputation, of driving my husband from his home in despair? Did you call yourself a rascal then? Did you--""Stop!" he said, in a voice that shook the rafters; "I command you, stop!"She had gradually worked herself from a deliberately insulting precision into an hysterical, and it is to be feared a virtuous, conviction of her wrongs.Beginning only with the instinct to taunt and wound the man before her, she had been led by a secret consciousness of something else he did not know to anticipate his reproach and justify herself in a wild feminine abandonment of emotion.But she stopped at his words.For a moment she was even thrilled again by the strength and imperiousness she had loved.

They were facing each other after five years of mistaken passion, even as they had faced each other that night in her mother's kitchen.But the grave of that dead passion yawned between them.

It was Joan who broke the silence, that after her single outburst seemed to fill and oppress the room.

"As far as Rosita is concerned," she said, with affected calmness, "she is going to-night.And you probably will not be troubled any longer by your mysterious visitor."Whether he heeded the sarcastic significance of her last sentence, or even heard her at all, he did not reply.For a moment he turned his blazing eyes full upon her, and then without a word strode from the room.

She walked to the door and stood uneasily listening in the passage until she heard the clatter of hoofs in the paved patio, and knew that he had ordered his horse.Then she turned back relieved to her room.

It was already sunset when Demorest drew rein again at the entrance of the corral, and the last stroke of the Angelus was ringing from the Mission tower.He looked haggard and exhausted, and his horse was flecked with foam and dirt.Wherever he had been, or for what object, or whether, objectless and dazed, he had simply sought to lose himself in aimlessly wandering over the dry yellow hills or in careering furiously among his own wild cattle on the arid, brittle plain; whether he had beaten all thought from his brain with the jarring leap of his horse, or whether he had pursued some vague and elusive determination to his own door, is not essential to this brief chronicle.Enough that when he dismounted he drew a pistol from his holster and replaced it in his pocket.

He had just pushed open the gate of the corral as he led in his horse by the bridle, when he noticed another horse tethered among some cotton woods that shaded the outer wall of his garden.As he gazed, the figure of a man swung lightly from one of the upper boughs of a cotton-wood on the wall and disappeared on the other side.It was evidently the clandestine visitor.Demorest was in no mood for trifling.Hurriedly driving his horse into the enclosure with a sharp cut of his riata, he closed the gate upon him, slipped past the intervening space into the patio, and then unnoticed into the upper part of the garden.Taking a narrow by-path in the direction of the cotton woods that could be seen above the wall, he presently came in sight of the object of his search moving stealthily towards the house.It was the work of a moment only to dash forward and seize him, to find himself engaged in a sharp wrestle, to half draw his pistol as he struggled with his captive in the open.But once in the clearer light, he started, his grasp of the stranger relaxed, and he fell back in bewildered terror.

"Edward Blandford! Good God!"

The pistol had dropped from his hand as he leaned breathless against a tree.The stranger kicked the weapon contemptuously aside.Then quietly adjusting his disordered dress, and picking the brambles from his sleeve, he said with the same air of disdain, "Yes! Edward Blandford, whom you thought dead! There! I'm not a ghost--though you tried to make me one this time," he said, pointing to the pistol.

Demorest passed his hand across his white face."Then it's you--and you have come here for--for--Joan?"

"For Joan?" echoed Blandford, with a quick scornful laugh, that made the blood flow back into Demorest's face as from a blow, and recalled his scattered senses."For Joan," he repeated."Not much!"The two men were facing each other in irreconcilable yet confused antagonism.Both were still excited and combative from their late physical struggle, but with feelings so widely different that it would have been impossible for either to have comprehended the other.In the figure that had apparently risen from the dead to confront him, Demorest only saw the man he had unconsciously wronged--the man who had it in his power to claim Joan and exact a terrible retribution! But it was part of this monstrous and irreconcilable situation that Blandford had ceased to contemplate it, and in his preoccupation only saw the actual interference of a man whom he no longer hated, but had begun to pity and despise.

He glanced coolly around him."Whatever we've got to say to each other," he said deliberately, "had better not be overheard.At least what I have got to say to you."