第22章

Baker explained with a smile: "Bob thinks he's seen it before; men are so obstinate.""Pardon me, Miss Yerba," said the Judge, blandly, "would you mind showing it to me, if it is not too much trouble?""Not at all," said Yerba, smiling, and detaching the circlet from her neck. "I'm afraid you'll find it rather old-fashioned.""That's just what I hope to find it," said Judge Baker, with a triumphant glance at his wife. "It was eight years ago when I saw it in Tucker's jewelry shop. I wanted to buy it for my little Minnie, but as the price was steep I hesitated, and when I did make up my mind he had disposed of it to another customer. Yes," he added, examining the necklace which Yerba had handed to him. "I am certain it is the same: it was unique, like this. Odd, isn't it?"Everybody said it WAS odd, and looked upon the occurrence with that unreasoning satisfaction with which average humanity receives the most trivial and unmeaning coincidences. It was left to Don Caesar to give it a gallant application.

"I have not-a the pleasure of knowing-a the Miss Minnie, but the jewelry, when she arrives, to the throat-a of Miss Yerba, she has not lost the value--the beauty--the charm.""No," said Woods, cheerily. "The fact is, Baker, you were too slow. Miss Yerba's folks gobbled up the necklace while you were thinking. You were a new-comer. Old 'forty-niners' did not hesitate over a thing they wanted.""You never knew who was your successful rival, eh?" said Dona Anna, turning to Judge Baker with a curious glance at Paul's pale face in passing.

"No," said Baker, "but"--he stopped with a hesitating laugh and some little confusion. "No, I've mixed it up with something else.

It's so long ago. I never knew, or if I did I've forgotten. But the necklace I remember." He handed it back to Yerba with a bow, and the incident ended.

Paul had not looked at Yerba during this conversation, an unreasoning instinct that he might confuse her, an equally unreasoning dread that he might see her confused by others, possessing him. And when he did glance at her calm, untroubled face, that seemed only a little surprised at his own singular coldness, he was by no means relieved. He was only convinced of one thing. In the last five minutes he had settled upon the irrevocable determination that his present relations with the girl could exist no longer. He must either tell her everything, or see her no more. There was no middle course. She was on the brink of an exposure at any moment, either through her ignorance or her unhappy pretension. In his intolerable position, he was equally unable to contemplate her peril, accept her defense, or himself defend her.

As if, with some feminine instinct, she had attributed his silence to some jealousy of Don Caesar's attentions, she more than once turned from the Spaniard to Paul with an assuring smile. In his anxiety, he half accepted the rather humiliating suggestion, and managed to say to her, in a lower tone:--"On this last visit of your American guardian, one would think, you need not already anticipate your Spanish relations."He was thrilled with the mischievous yet faintly tender pleasure that sparkled in her eyes as she said,--"You forget it is my American guardian's FIRST visit, as well as his last.""And as your guardian," he went on, with half-veiled seriousness, "I protest against your allowing your treasures, the property of the Trust," he gazed directly into her beautiful eyes, "being handled and commented upon by everybody."When the ladies had left the table, he was, for a moment, relieved.

But only for a moment. Judge Baker drew his chair beside Paul's, and, taking his cigar from his lips, said, with a perfunctory laugh:--"I say, Hathaway, I pulled up just in time to save myself from making an awful speech, just now, to your ward."Paul looked at him with cold curiosity.

"Yes. Gad! Do you know WHO was my rival in that necklace transaction?""No," said Paul, with frigid carelessness.

"Why, Kate Howard! Fact, sir. She bought it right under my nose--and overbid me, too."

Paul did not lose his self-possession. Thanks to the fact that Yerba was not present, and that Don Caesar, who had overheard the speech, moved forward with a suggestive and unpleasant smile, his agitation congealed into a coldly placid fury.

"And I suppose," he returned, with perfect calmness, "that, after the usual habit of this class of women, the necklace very soon found its way back, through the pawnbroker, to the jeweler again.

It's a common fate."

"Yes, of course," said Judge Baker, cheerfully. "You're quite right. That's undoubtedly the solution of it. But," with a laugh, "I had a narrow escape from saying something--eh?""A very narrow escape from an apparently gratuitous insult," said Paul, gravely, but fixing his eyes, now more luminous than ever with anger, not on the speakers but on the face of Don Caesar, who was standing at his side. "you were about to say,"--"Eh--oh--ah! this Kate Howard? So! I have heard of her--yees!

And Miss Yerba--ah--she is of my country--I think. Yes--we shall claim her--of a truth--yes.""Your countrymen, I believe, are in the habit of making claims that are more often founded on profit than verity," said Paul, with smileless and insulting deliberation. He knew perfectly what he was saying, and the result he expected. Only twenty-four hours before he had smiled at Pendleton's idea of averting scandal and discovery by fighting, yet he was endeavoring to pick a quarrel with a man, merely on suspicion, for the same purpose, and he saw nothing strange in it. A vague idea, too, that this would irrevocably confirm him in opposition to Yerba's illusions probably determined him.