“Ith it a mulatto or a Thircuth, or both?” he asked, with affected anxiety.
Low's Indian phlegm was impervious to such assault. He turned to Teresa, without apparently noticing her companion. “I turned back,” he said quietly, “as soon as I knew there were strangers here; I thought you might need me.” She noticed for the first time that, in addition to his rifle, he carried a revolver and hunting knife in his belt.
“Yeth,” returned Curson, with an ineffectual attempt to imitate Low's phlegm; “but ath I didn't happen to be a sthranger to this lady, perhaps it wathn't nethethary, particularly ath I had two friends—”
“Waiting at the edge of the wood with a led horse,” interrupted Low, without addressing him, but apparently continuing his explanation to Teresa. But she turned to Low with feverish anxiety.
“That's so—he is an old friend—” she gave a quick, imploring glance at Curson—“an old friend who came to help me away—he is very kind,” she stammered, turning alternately from the one to the other; “but I told him there was no hurry—at least to-day—that you—were—very good—too, and would hide me a little longer, until your plan—you know YOUR plan,” she added, with a look of beseeching significance to Low—“could be tried.” And then, with a helpless conviction that her excuses, motives, and emotions were equally and perfectly transparent to both men, she stopped in a tremble.
“Perhapth it 'th jutht ath well, then, that the gentleman came thtraight here, and didn't tackle my two friendth when he pathed them,” observed Curson, half sarcastically.
“I have not passed your friends, nor have I been near them,” said Low, looking at him for the first time, with the same exasperating calm, “or perhaps I should not be HERE or they THERE. I knew that one man entered the wood a few moments ago, and that two men and four horses remained outside.”
“That's true,” said Teresa to Curson excitedly—“that's true. He knows all. He can see without looking, hear without listening. He—he—” she stammered, colored, and stopped.
The two men had faced each other. Curson, after his first good-natured impulse, had retained no wish to regain Teresa, whom he felt he no longer loved, and yet who, for that very reason perhaps, had awakened his chivalrous instincts. Low, equally on his side, was altogether unconscious of any feeling which might grow into a passion, and prevent him from letting her go with another if for her own safety. They were both men of a certain taste and refinement. Yet, in spite of all this, some vague instinct of the baser male animal remained with them, and they were moved to a mutually aggressive attitude in the presence of the female.
One word more, and the opening chapter of a sylvan Iliad might have begun. But this modern Helen saw it coming, and arrested it with an inspiration of feminine genius. Without being observed, she disengaged her knife from her bosom and let it fall as if by accident. It struck the ground with the point of its keen blade, bounded and rolled between them. The two men started and looked at each other with a foolish air. Curson laughed.