Marcia, from the tone of his voice, and
from Paulette's answer, cursory and indistinct through the closed door:
"I know. I'm going to." She added something I could not hear at all, but
I heard Macartney say sharply that to-morrow would be too late.

Paulette said "yes," and then "yes" again, as though he gave her a
message. Then she spoke out clearly: "There's nothing else to say. I'll
do it now." I heard her move away, I thought to Marcia's door. Macartney
went out the front door, banging it.

I had no desire to go to bed. I felt as if I had walked from Dan to
Beersheba and been knocked down and robbed on the way. I knew my dream
girl was not mine, now or ever, because she was Dudley's, but I had
never thought of her being anything like Tatiana Paulina Valenka. It was
not the jewel story that hit me: I knew she had not stolen Van Ruyne's
old necklace, no matter how things looked. It was that she must care for
Dudley, or she would never have let him bring her out here. And another
thing hit me harder still, and that was Hutton,--the cousin Macartney
said was engaged to her, and Dudley said cadged on her, till he ended by
branding her as a thief and getting away with the spoils. And the crazy
thought that jumped into my head, without any earthly reason, was that
it was just Hutton who had been hounding her at La Chance; that, while I
had been addling my brains with suspecting Collins, it was Hutton that
Paulette Brown--whose real name was Valenka--had stolen out to meet in
the dark!

Once I thought of it, I was dead sure Hutton had followed her to La
Chance. I knew from my own ears that she hated and distrusted the man
for whom she had once mistaken me, that it was he from whom she had
tried to protect my gold; and I wondered with a horror that made me too
sick to swear, if it were Hutton himself, and not Dunn nor Collins, who
had cached that wolf dope in my wagon! If it were, he had not cared
about wolves killing the girl who drove with me, so long as he got my
gold. But there I saw I was making a fool of myself, for he could not
have known she was going. I steadied my mind on the thing, like you
steady a machine.

If Hutton had been hanging around La Chance, either from so-called love,
or to get Paulette into a mess with our gold, as Dudley swore he had
with Van Ruyne's emeralds, he could not have been seen about the
mine,--for Macartney would have recognized him and given him away. He
must be cached in the bush so