"Perhaps not, but I don't think, if you will allow me to say so, my dear colonel, that YOU have been treating the whole affair very seriously. I left you two months ago utterly opposed to views which you are now treating as of no importance. And yet you wish me to believe that nothing has happened, and that you have no further information than you had then. That this is so, and that you are really no nearer the FACTS, I am willing to believe from your ignorance of what I have just told you, and your concern at it. But that you have not been influenced in your JUDGMENT of what you do know, I cannot believe?" He drew nearer Pendleton, and laid his hand upon his arm. "I beg you to be frank with me, for the sake of the person whose interests I see you have at heart. In what way will the discovery I have just made affect them? You are not so far prejudiced as to be blind to the fact that it may be dangerous because it seems corroborative."Pendleton coughed, rose, took his stick, and limped up and down the room, finally dropping into an armchair by the window, with his cane between his knees, and the drooping gray silken threads of his long moustache curled nervously between his fingers.
"Mr. Hathaway, I WILL be frank with you. I know nothing of this blank affair--blank it all!--but what I've told you. Your discovery may be a coincidence, nothing more. But I HAVE been influenced, sir,--influenced by one of the most perfect goddess-like--yes, sir; one of the most simple girlish creatures that God ever sent upon earth. A woman that I should be proud to claim as my daughter, a woman that would always be the superior of any man who dare aspire to be her husband! A young lady as peerless in her beauty as she is in her accomplishments, and whose equal don't walk this planet! I know, sir, YOU don't follow me; I know, Mr.
Hathaway, your Puritan prejudices; your Church proclivities, your worldly sense of propriety; and, above all, sir, the blanked hypocritical Pharisaic doctrines of your party--I mean no offense to YOU, sir, personally--blind you to that girl's perfections.
She, poor child, herself has seen it and felt it, but never, in her blameless innocence and purity, suspecting the cause, 'There is,'
she said to me last night, confidentially, 'something strangely antagonistic and repellent in our natures, some undefined and nameless barrier between our ever understanding each other.' You comprehend, Mr. Hathaway, she does full justice to your intentions and your unquestioned abilities. 'I am not blind,' she said, 'to Mr. Hathaway's gifts, and it is very possible the fault lies with me.' Her very words, sir.""Then you believe she is perfectly ignorant of her real mother?"asked Paul, with a steady voice, but a whitening face.
"As an unborn child," said the colonel, emphatically. "The snow on the Sierras is not more spotlessly pure of any trace or contamination of the mud of the mining ditches, than she of her mother and her past. The knowledge of it, the mere breath of suspicion of it, in her presence would be a profanation, sir! Look at her eye--open as the sky and as clear; look at her face and figure--as clean, sir, as a Blue-Grass thoroughbred! Look at the way she carries herself, whether in those white frillings of her simple school-gown, or that black evening dress that makes her look like a princess! And, blank me, if she isn't one! There's no poor stock there--no white trash--no mixed blood, sir. Blank it all, sir, if it comes to THAT--the Arguellos--if there's a hound of them living--might go down on their knees to have their name borne by such a creature! By the Eternal, sir, if one of them dared to cross her path with a word that wasn't abject--yes, sir, ABJECT, I'd wipe his dust off the earth and send it back to his ancestors before he knew where he was, or my name isn't Harry Pendleton!"Hopeless and inconsistent as all this was, it was a wonderful sight to see the colonel, his dark stern face illuminated with a zealot's enthusiasm, his eyes on fire, the ends of his gray moustache curling around his set jaw, his head thrown back, his legs astride, and his gold-headed stick held in the hollow of his elbow, like a lance at rest! Paul saw it, and knew that this Quixotic transformation was part of HER triumph, and yet had a miserable consciousness that the charms of this Dulcinea del Toboso had scarcely been exaggerated. He turned his eyes away, and said quietly,--"Then you don't think this coincidence will ever awaken any suspicion in regard to her real mother?""Not in the least, sir--not in the least," said the colonel, yet, perhaps, with more doggedness than conviction of accent. "Nobody but yourself would ever notice that police report, and the connection of that woman's name with his was not notorious, or Ishould have known it."
"And you believe," continued Paul hopelessly, "that Miss Yerba's selection of the name was purely accidental?""Purely--a school-girl's fancy. Fancy, did I say? No, sir; by Jove, an inspiration!""And," continued Paul, almost mechanically, "you do not think it may be some insidious suggestion of an enemy who knew of this transient relation that no one suspected?"To his final amazement Pendleton's brow cleared! "An enemy? Gad!
you may be right. I'll look into it; and, if that is the case, which I scarcely dare hope for, Mr. Hathaway, you can safely leave him to ME."He looked so supremely confident in his fatuous heroism that Paul could say no more. He rose and, with a faint smile upon his pale face, held out his hand. "I think that is all I have to say. When you see Miss Yerba again,--as you will, no doubt,--you may tell her that I am conscious of no misunderstanding on my part, except, perhaps, as to the best way I could serve her, and that, but for what she has told YOU, I should certainly have carried away no remembrance of any misunderstanding of HERS.""Certainly," said the colonel, with cheerful philosophy, "I will carry your message with pleasure. You understand how it is, Mr.
