irst his niece and sister in a stately precision
of politeness that was not lost on the proud Blue Grass stranger. She
returned their visit at Los Gatos, and there made the formal
acquaintance of Don Jose's grandmother, a lady who still regarded the
decrepit Concha as a giddy _muchacha_, and who herself glittered as
with the phosphorescence of refined decay. Through this circumstance
she learned that Don Jose was not yet fifty, and that his gravity of
manner and sedateness was more the result of fastidious isolation and
temperament than years. She could not tell why the information gave her
a feeling of annoyance, but it caused her to regret the absence of
Poindexter, and to wonder, also somewhat nervously, why he had lately
avoided her presence. The thought that he might be doing so from a
recollection of the innuendoes of Mrs. Patterson caused a little tremor
of indignation in her pulses. "As if"--but she did not finish the
sentence even to herself, and her eyes filled with bitter tears.

Yet she had thought of the husband who had so cruelly wronged her less
feverishly, less impatiently than before. For she thought she loved him
now the more deeply, because, although she was not reconciled to his
absence, it seemed to keep alive the memory of what he had been before
his one wild act separated them. She had never seen the reflection of
another woman's eyes in his; the past contained no haunting
recollection of waning or alienated affection; she could meet him
again, and, clasping her arms around him, awaken as if from a troubled
dream without reproach or explanation. Her strong belief in this made
her patient; she no longer sought to know the particulars of his
flight, and never dreamed that her passive submission to his absence
was partly due to a fear that something in his actual presence at that
moment would have destroyed that belief forever.

For this reason the delicate reticence of the people at Los Gatos, and
their seclusion from the world which knew of her husband's fault, had
made her encourage the visits of Don Jose, until from the instinct
already alluded to she one day summoned Poindexter to Los Cuervos, on
the day that Don Jose usually called. But to her surprise the two men
met more or less awkwardly and coldly, and her tact as hostess was
tried to the utmost to keep their evident antagonism from being too
apparent. The effort to reconcile their mutual discontent, and some
other feeling she did not quit