It wasn’t noisy grief, just the slow tears of exhaustion. She must have cried herself to sleep.
What was it waked her? She sat up suddenly in the dark. Her lamp was out. Dim moonlight made a gray square of her window, and as she stared at it, there came once more the rattle of gravel against the glass—then a low, guarded whistle.
The house was still. It must be some time in the small hours. She didn’t dare strike a match to look at her watch. She stole across and peered out between the curtains. Over there by the cottonwoods that gave the place its name—wasn’t that a mounted man in their shadow? Pearse! It must be. It couldn’t be any one else! She waved a hasty signal, then slipped over, got her own door open as silently as she could, and hurried down stairs.
As she struggled with the fastening of the front door, she was desperately afraid he might have been there longer than she knew—be discouraged—leave without seeing her. But she’d waved to him from the window. She thought he answered. Oh—the door gave at last, but noisily.
She crossed the court on winged feet; some one caught her in a rough embrace. A face was pushed down against hers. Some one whispered,
“You made a lot of noise getting out, girlie. Where’s your bag?”
She drew back, bewildered, scared, answering mechanically: “It’s upstairs.”
“Well—for the Lord’s sake!”
That wasn’t Pearse’s voice—even in a whisper Hilda knew it wasn’t. She’d known this wasn’t Pearse as soon as he touched her. Who was it? Who did he think she was? She tried to pull free. As her head went back, her eye caught the row of upper windows. The resurrection plant changed from Maybelle’s sill to her own—the gravel on the pane—she’d blundered into some arrangement of Maybelle’s!
“I’m not—” she began; but the man’s fierce whisper interrupted,