"Ze Saints be praised, zey do not!" cried the Senora who by this time had regained her composure. "Such a zing 'as happened nevair before."

"They are a little more free-handed out here than we are," remarked the Captain. "Where we come from, people allow a man to go free after exhausting all the resources of the law, while here, they quietly hang a scoundrel when they catch him without making any fuss about it. It's much simpler, you know."

"Beautiful!" echoed the Colonel.

VIII

After much persuasion and further caustic remarks on the country and a people whose chief occupation seemed to be that of shooting and hanging one another, Mrs. Forest was finally induced to enter the house, leaving Blanch and Bessie seated on the bench beneath the cottonwood tree where they had collapsed, the result of the shock their nerves had sustained.

Their presence seemed as incongruous with their surroundings as that of some delicate hot-house flower blooming in the midst of the desert.

"Could you have believed it if you hadn't seen it?" asked Bessie, the first to break the silence. "Is it all real, or are we still dreaming? I wish somebody would pinch me, my wits are so scattered," and she pa.s.sed her hand across her eyes as though to dispel some dreadful nightmare.

"I never imagined," replied her companion in a vague uncertain tone of voice, like one laboring under the influence of a narcotic, "that such people existed anywhere outside of books, and yet the samples to which we have just been introduced make characters of fiction look tame in comparison. Oh, dear!" she burst forth, "who could have imagined it?"

"What a transition--I can't understand it!" said Bessie. "I feel like one who has just dropped from the sky to earth."

"No wonder! I, too, am still seeing stars. Jack certainly must be mad, else how could he have ever picked out such a forsaken land whose inhabitants seem to consist chiefly of ruffians and black women?"

"It's simply incomprehensible after all he's seen of the world," replied Bessie. "Did you notice how he enjoyed our discomfiture? How it was all he could do to keep from laughing in our faces?"

"The brute!" cried Blanch.

"If we had only realized to what we were coming--" Bessie began.

"Oh, it's too late to say that!" interrupted Blanch. "Now that I'm here, I'm not going to turn back; I'm going to see this thing through. And what's more," she added with unmistakable emphasis, "I'm going to see that woman! Have you noticed any one that looks like her?" she asked cautiously, lowering her voice and looking about suspiciously, as she rose from her seat.

"Pshaw!" laughed Bessie, also rising and shaking the dust from her skirt. "You've scarcely talked of anything else since we left home. Why, I really believe you are beginning to be jealous of this creature of your imagination. It's too absurd to suppose that Jack--"

"Is it any more impossible than the people and things we have just encountered?"

"Nonsense! Jack in love with some half-breed--that dusky beauty in breeches who rides astride, and whom he happened to mention to us? It's preposterous!"

"My dear," resumed Blanch calmly, "don't deceive yourself. My woman's intuition tells me that I'm right. Jack's notion of beginning a new life is all nonsense--there's a deeper reason than that for this change in him. Take my word for it, there's a woman at the bottom of it for what possible attraction could this horrid country and its people have for a civilized being?"

"I can't believe it," answered Bessie; "you know how fastidious Jack is.

Besides it was only a fleeting glance that he caught of the woman he mentioned--and that in the twilight."

"A glance is quite enough for a fool to fall in love with a phantom,"

retorted Blanch warmly, thrusting the ground vigorously with the point of her sunshade.

"They say," she went on, "that these dark beauties of the South possess a peculiar fascination of their own--that they have a way of captivating men before they realize what's happening. They sort of hypnotize them, you know."

"But not a man of Jack's type!"

"Oh, I don't mean to infer that she's beautiful," continued Blanch.

"Attractive she may be, but how could anything so common be really beautiful? It's not that which worries me--it's the state of his mind.

He has evidently reached a crisis. As long as I can keep him in sight he's safe, but should he be left here alone with one of these women in his present frame of mind, there's no knowing what might happen. Any woman if fairly attractive and a schemer, can marry almost any man she has a mind to. You know," she added, "he's not given to talking without a purpose and usually acts even though he lives to repent of it afterwards. Why, if he were left here, he might marry from _ennui_, who knows? One hears of such things."

"Heavens!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bessie, "it makes one shudder to think of it!

Hush!" she added, nodding in the direction of the house where the Captain appeared in the doorway and halted, regarding them with a mixed expression of curiosity and amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Well," he said at length, descending to where they stood, "how do first impressions of the place strike you? It's not so dull, after all, is it?" he added, concealing his mirth with difficulty.

"It's charming," replied Blanch in her richest vein of sarcasm, addressing him for the first time since her arrival. "What delightful surroundings, and what congenial people one meets here!"

The Captain burst into an uproarious fit of laughter. The sight of Blanch had sent a sudden thrill through him that told him plainly enough how deeply rooted had been his love and that he had not yet succeeded in eradicating it entirely from his heart as he had supposed.

The spark of the old love still smoldered within him, and would she succeed again in fanning it into flame? He had not forgotten, however, that he had suffered, and her presence acted like some wonderful balm to his wounded soul. It was his turn now and he could afford to humor her.

Though there was nothing triumphant in his manner, he, nevertheless, enjoyed that sneaking feeling of satisfaction which most of us experience on beholding the discomfiture of those who have treated us lightly. Moreover, he thoroughly realized what the coming of Blanch and his family meant. They had come to laugh at him and his surroundings--to ridicule his ideas. The great harlot world had come to pooh-pooh--to scoff and laugh him out of his convictions, and no one knew better than he did what the mighty power and influence of the great civilized guffaw meant. For had he not, during his diplomatic career, seen the primitive man laughed out of his cool, naked blessedness into a modern, cheap pair of sweltering pantaloons? But things were now equal, and this promised to be the most exciting diplomatic game in which he had yet engaged. The defeat of Spain and the annexation of the Philippines were trifles in comparison. And he decided then and there to make the most of it--that come what might, all who entered this game would pay the price to the last farthing. Time and circ.u.mstances would prove who was right--they or he.

"Do you know," he said at length, "I don't pity you a bit; it serves you right for coming."

"Pity?" retorted Bessie. "Do we look like a pair of beggars that have come two thousand miles to crave pity at the feet of the high and mighty Captain Forest? Your condescension, Cousin, is insufferable," she added.

"I was just thinking," he resumed, thoroughly enjoying his cousin's wrath, "that you had better drop your silly affectations and spoiled ways while here."

"Really!" burst out Bessie again, her face flushing with growing indignation.

"I do," he returned placidly, "for somehow, the people about here don't seem to appreciate such things."

"I can readily believe it," answered Blanch with a contemptuous laugh and hauteur of manner that were almost insulting. "I don't wonder you feel uneasy on our account considering that we have never enjoyed the advantages their social standards offer. We trust, however, for the sake of old friendship, that you will overlook our shortcomings. A lesson in manners might not be lost on us," she added with a withering glance and tone that would have reduced any other man to a sere and yellow leaf.

She paused, her delicately gloved hand resting lightly on the handle of her sunshade on which she leaned, throwing the graceful outline of her tall slender figure into clear relief against the green background of trees and shrubs. A strange light came into her beautiful blue eyes, softening the expression of her face; a face that had been the hope and despair of many a man; a face that was not alone beautiful but alive and interesting; a face into which all men longed to gaze and once seen could never be forgotten.

Only one man had ever resisted the power and fascination of that face; the man whom she had flung from her in an ungovernable fit of pa.s.sion; the man whom she either had come to claim as her own again, or to humiliate as he had humiliated her. Who could guess the real motive that prompted her to humble her pride so far as to follow him? Was it love or hatred? Who could say? Her delicate, coral lips curled with just the suggestion of a sneer as she raised her eyes to his again and said in a tone of contempt: "So this is the place where your wild woman lives--"

but the words died on her lips. Her head came up with a jerk and her figure suddenly straightened and stiffened as her gaze became riveted on the face of Chiquita who stood just opposite on the veranda lightly poised with one foot on the steps.

It would have been interesting to have read the thoughts of these two women as they stood silently confronting one another, each taking the measure of the other.

The contrast between the two could not have been more striking. The soft, delicate, well-groomed figure of Blanch, the accomplished woman of the world, with eyes intoxicating as wine and a glowing wealth of golden hair, tempting and alluring as the luxuriance of old Rome at the height of her triumphs before her decadence set in--the last fair breath of her ancient glory--the best and fairest that modern civilization had produced. She had no need of the artificial head-gear and upholstery with which the modern society belle is wont to bolster up herself. There was not the slightest trace of rouge on her lips or cheeks. She had learned that simple food, fresh air and sleep and exercise were the only preservatives for the form and complexion. Spoiled though she was, she was genuine to the core.

On the other hand, what the symmetrical well-rounded lines of Chiquita's figure lost by the unfair comparison of her worn and faded dress with that of the latest Parisian creation, was more than compensated for by the heavy luxuriant ma.s.ses of blue-black hair, straight nose, large, dark piercing eyes that shone from beneath delicately penciled, broad arching brows, and the mysterious hawk-like wildness of her gaze and appearance and general air of strength and power, baffling and inscrutable as the origin of her race; a face and figure which exemplified the perfect type of a race that carried one back to the forgotten days of ancient Egypt and India.

Truly, twice blessed or cursed by the G.o.ds was he to be loved by two such women; the one fashion's, the other nature's child.

The look of embarra.s.sment on Captain Forest's face, together with the ludicrousness of the situation, caused Bessie to burst into a sudden fit of laughter into which Blanch, in spite of herself, was irresistibly drawn. Fortunately for the Captain, he did not entirely lose his presence of mind as one is apt to do who unexpectedly finds himself between two tigers about to spring. He did the only sensible thing a man could do under the circ.u.mstances. He retired precipitately, leaving the field to whomsoever wished it most.

"The Senoritas laugh," said Chiquita at length, the first to speak.

There was a strange light in her eyes as she slowly descended the veranda and came toward them. The sound of her full, rich, musical voice, colored with a soft accent that was pleasing to the ear, instantly brought Blanch and Bessie to themselves.

"Perhaps," she began again calmly, "it is because I am poor?"

"Oh, no, Senorita, how could you imagine--" exclaimed Blanch, recovering her breath.