arning! It's suthing betwixt jim-jams and doddering
idjiocy. Here I'd hev been willin' to swear that Mrs. Baxter here told
me SHE had sold this yer ranch nearly two years ago to Don Jose, and now
you--"

"Stop!" said Mrs. Tucker, in a voice that chilled them.

She was standing upright and rigid, as if stricken to stone. "I command
you to tell me what this means!" she said, turning only her blazing eyes
upon the woman.

Even the ready smile faded from Mrs. Baxter's lips as she replied
hesitatingly and submissively: "I thought you knew already that Spencer
had given this ranch to me. I sold it to Don Jose to get the money for
us to go away with. It was Spencer's idea--"

"You lie!" said Mrs. Tucker.

There was a dead silence. The wrathful blood that had quickly mounted
to Mrs. Baxter's cheek, to Patterson's additional bewilderment, faded as
quickly. She did not lift her eyes again to Mrs. Tucker's, but, slowly
raising herself from her seat, said, "I wish to God I did lie; but it's
true. And it's true that I never touched a cent of the money, but gave
it all to him!" She laid her hand on Patterson's arm, and said, "Come!
let us go," and led him a few steps towards the gateway. But here
Patterson paused, and again passed his hand over his melancholy brow.
The necessity of coherently and logically closing the conversation
impressed itself upon his darkening mind. "Then you don't happen to have
heard anything of Spencer?" he said sadly, and vanished with Mrs. Baxter
through the gate.

Left alone to herself, Mrs. Tucker raised her hands above her head with
a little cry, interlocked her rigid fingers, and slowly brought her
palms down upon her upturned face and eyes, pressing hard as if to crush
out all light and sense of life before her. She stood thus for a moment
motionless and silent, with the rising wind whispering without and
flecking her white morning dress with gusty shadows from the arbor.
Then, with closed eyes, dropping her hands to her breast, still pressing
hard, she slowly passed them down the shapely contours of her figure to
the waist, and with another cry cast them off as if she were stripping
herself of some loathsome garment. Then she walked quickly to the
gateway, looked out, returned to the corridor, unloosening and taking
off her wedding-ring from her finger as she walked. Here she paused,
then slowly and deliberately rearranged the chairs and adjusted the
gay-colored rugs that draped them, and quie