But he did not hear the last sentence, and was gone.
CHAPTER VII.
WHAT PASSED UNDER THE PINE AND WHAT REMAINED THERE.
Ramirez was not as happy in his revenge as he had anticipated. He had, in an instant of impulsive rage, fired his mine prematurely, and, as he feared, impotently. Gabriel had not visibly sickened, faded, nor fallen blighted under the exposure of his wife's deceit. It was even doubtful, as far as Ramirez could judge from his quiet reception of the revelation, whether he would even call that wife to account for it. Again, Ramirez was unpleasantly conscious that this exposure had lost some of its dignity and importance by being wrested from his as a confession made under pressure or duress. Worse than all, he had lost the opportunity of previously threatening Mrs. Conroy with the disclosure, and the delicious spectacle of her discomfiture. In point of fact his revenge had been limited to the cautious cowardice of the anonymous letter-writer, who, stabbing in the dark, enjoys neither the contemplation of the agonies of his victim, nor the assertion of his own individual power.
To this torturing reflection a terrible suspicion of the Spanish translator, Perkins, was superadded. For Gabriel, Ramirez had only that contempt which every lawless lover has for the lawful husband of his mistress, while for Perkins he had that agonising doubt which every lawless lover has for every other man but the husband. In making this exposure had he not precipitated a catastrophe as fatal to himself as to the husband? Might they not both drive this woman into the arms of another man? Ramirez paced the little bedroom of the Grand Conroy Hotel, a prey to that bastard remorse of all natures like his own,—the overwhelming consciousness of opportunities for villany misspent.
Come what might he would see her again, and at once. He would let her know that he suspected her relations with this translator. He would tell her that he had written the letter—that he had forged the grant—that——
A tap at the door recalled him to himself. It opened presently to Sal, coy, bashful, and conscious. The evident agitation of this young foreigner had to Sal's matter-of-fact comprehension only one origin—a hopeless, consuming passion for herself.
"Dinner hez bin done gone an hour ago," said that arch virgin, "but I put suthin' by for ye. Ye was inquirin' last night about them Conroys. I thought I'd tell ye thet Gabril hez bin yer askin' arter Lawyer Maxwell—which he's off to Sacramento—altho' one o' Sue Markle's most intymit friends and steddeyist boarders!"
But Mr. Ramirez had no ear for Gabriel now.