a possibility, that I
shall not scruple to take any means--the strongest--to prevent even
the remotest chance of it. Your aunt has been looking for you; you had
better go to her now. I will close the room and lock the door. Meantime,
I should advise you not to sit so near an open window with a candle at
night in this locality. Even if it might not be dangerous for you, it
might be fatal to the foolish creatures it might attract."

He took the key from the door as he held it open for her to pass out.
She uttered a shrill little laugh, like a nervous, mischievous child,
and, slipping out of her previous artificial attitude as if it had been
a mantle, ran out of the room.

CHAPTER X.

As Susy's footsteps died away, Clarence closed the door, walked to the
window, and examined it closely. The bars had been restored since he had
wrenched them off to give ingress to the family on the day of recapture.
He glanced around the room; nothing seemed to have been disturbed.
Nevertheless he was uneasy. The suspicions of a frank, trustful nature
when once aroused are apt to be more general and far-reaching than the
specific distrusts of the disingenuous, for they imply the overthrow of
a whole principle and not a mere detail. Clarence's conviction that Susy
had seen Pedro recently since his dismissal led him into the wildest
surmises of her motives. It was possible that without her having reason
to suspect Pedro's greater crime, he might have confided to her his
intention of reclaiming the property and installing her as the mistress
and chatelaine of the rancho. The idea was one that might have appealed
to Susy's theatrical imagination. He recalled Mrs. McClosky's sneer
at his own pretensions and her vague threats of a rival of more lineal
descent. The possible infidelity of Susy to himself touched him lightly
when the first surprise was over; indeed, it scarcely could be called
infidelity, if she knew and believed Mary Rogers's discovery; and the
conviction that he and she had really never loved each other now enabled
him, as he believed, to look at her conduct dispassionately. Yet it was
her treachery to Mrs. Peyton and not to himself that impressed him most,
and perhaps made him equally unjust, through his affections.

He extinguished the candles, partly from some vague precautions he could
not explain, and partly to think over his fears in the abstraction and
obscurity of the semi-darkness. The higher windows suffused a