Either she had not seen the abstraction of the letter, or his acting was perfect, for she returned his look unwaveringly. “The fruit, eh? I have not comprehend.”
“Wa'al, I reckon I will,” said Ezekiel. He walked towards the cactus; there was nothing to be seen but its thorny spikes. He was confronted, however, by the sudden apparition of Joan from behind the manzanita at its side. She looked up and glanced from Ezekiel to Dona Rosita with an agitated air.
“Oh, you saw him too?” she said eagerly.
“I reckon,” answered Ezekiel, with his eyes still on Rosita. “I was wondering what on airth he was so taken with that air cactus for.”
Rosita had become slightly pale again in the presence of her friend. Joan quietly pushed Ezekiel aside and put her arm around her. “Are you frightened again?” she asked, in a low whisper.
“Not mooch,” returned Rosita, without lifting her eyes.
“It was only some peon, trespassing to pick blossoms for his sweetheart,” she said significantly, with a glance towards Ezekiel. “Let us go in.”
She passed her hand through Rosita's passive arm and led her towards the house, Ezekiel's penetrating eyes still following Rosita with an expression of gratified doubt.
For once, however, that astute observer was wrong. When Mrs. Demorest had reached the house she slipped into her own room, and, bolting the door, drew from her bosom a letter which SHE had picked from the cactus thorn, and read it with a flushed face and eager eyes.
It may have been the effect of the phenomenal weather, but the next day a malign influence seemed to pervade the Demorest household. Dona Rosita was confined to her room by an attack of languid nerves, superinduced, as she was still voluble enough to declare, by the narcotic effect of some unknown herb which the lunatic Ezekiel had no doubt mysteriously administered to her with a view of experimenting on its properties. She even avowed that she must speedily return to Los Osos, before Ezekiel should further compromise her reputation by putting her on a colored label in place of the usual Celestial Distributer of the Panacea. Ezekiel himself, who had been singularly abstracted and reticent, and had absolutely foregone one or two opportunities of disagreeable criticism, had gone to the pueblo early that morning. The house was comparatively silent and deserted when Demorest walked into his wife's boudoir.