“If you consult my wishes you will stay, if only long enough to forgive me. But if I have offended you unknowingly, and you are implacable—”
“I can go to-morrow at sunrise if I like?”
“As you will,” returned Thatcher gravely.
“Gracias, Senor.”
They walked slowly back to the house, Thatcher with a masculine sense of being unreasonably afflicted, Carmen with a woman's instinct of being hopelessly crushed. No word was spoken until they reached the door. Then Carmen suddenly, in her old, impulsive way, and in a childlike treble, sang out merrily, “Good night, O Don Royal, and pleasant dreams. Hasta manana.”
Thatcher stood dumb and astounded at this capricious girl. She saw his mystification instantly. “It is for the old Cat!” she whispered, jerking her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the sleeping Mrs. P. “Good night,—go!”
He went to give orders for a peon to attend the ladies and their equipage the next day. He awoke to find Miss De Haro gone, with her escort, towards Monterey. And without the Plodgitt.
He could not conceal his surprise from the latter lady. She, left alone,—a not altogether unavailable victim to the wiles of our sex,—was embarrassed. But not so much that she could not say to Thatcher: “I told you so,—gone to her uncle. . . . To tell him ALL!”
“All. D—n it, WHAT can she tell him?” roared Thatcher, stung out of his self-control.
“Nothing, I hope, that she should not,” said Mrs. P., and chastely retired.