eless, the ostler's ostentatious adjuration of "Now then, aren't
you going to bring out that mustang for the Senora?" puzzled her. It was
not until the fresh horse was put to, and she had flung a piece of gold
into the attendant's hand, that the "Gracias" of his unmistakable Saxon
speech revealed to her the reason of the lawyer's caution. Poindexter
had evidently represented her to these people as a native Californian
who did not speak English. In her inconsistency her blood took fire at
this first suggestion of deceit, and burned in her face. Why should he
try to pass her off as anybody else? Why should she not use her own, her
husband's name? She stopped and bit her lip.

It was but the beginning of an uneasy train of thought. She suddenly
found herself thinking of her visitor, Calhoun Weaver, and not
pleasantly. He would hear of their ruin tomorrow, perhaps of her own
flight. He would remember his visit, and what would he think of her
deceitful frivolity? Would he believe that she was then ignorant of the
failure? It was her first sense of any accountability to others than
herself, but even then it was rather owing to an uneasy consciousness of
what her husband must feel if he were subjected to the criticisms of
men like Calhoun. She wondered if others knew that he had kept her
in ignorance of his flight. Did Poindexter know it, or had he only
entrapped her into the admission? Why had she not been clever enough
to make him think that she knew it already? For the moment she hated
Poindexter for sharing that secret. Yet this was again followed by a
new impatience of her husband's want of insight into her ability to help
him. Of course the poor fellow could not bear to worry her, could
not bear to face such men as Calhoun, or even Poindexter (she added
exultingly to herself), but he might have sent her a line as he fled,
only to prepare her to meet and combat the shame alone. It did not occur
to her unsophisticated singleness of nature that she was accepting as an
error of feeling what the world would call cowardly selfishness.

At midnight the storm lulled and a few stars trembled through the rent
clouds. Her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and her country
instincts, a little overlaid by the urban experiences of the last few
years, came again to the surface. She felt the fresh, cool radiation
from outlying, upturned fields, the faint, sad odors from dim stretches
of pricking grain and quickening leaf, and w