She no longer opened her diary. Never again, she told herself, would she keep a record of her days. But, some time—years from now, maybe—when she could read what she had written without a heartache, she would open the unfinished volume where she had broken off a sentence in the great redwood forest. She might be able to think of Nick Hilliard then without longing for him; but that time seemed far, very far away.
One August evening Angela came back from an excursion to the top of Mount Tallac. She was tired, and had made up her mind to dine in her own sitting-room, then to go immediately to bed; but asking for her key she was told that "a lady was waiting to see her; had been waiting nearly all day."
"A lady!" she echoed. Could it be Mrs. Gaylor? Angela hoped not; for, though she had not heard from Nick those things which Carmen had feared and expected her to hear, she guessed something of Carmen's hate. The fact that she had not been allowed to go back; that Kate had arrived in Bakersfield with a story of Mrs. Gaylor's being called suddenly away from home; that Carmen had never answered a short letter she wrote; all these things roused her suspicions. Indeed, she had even gone so far as to associate the box of poison-oak leaves with Mrs. Gaylor; and now the thought that the Spanish woman might have followed her to Tahoe sent a shiver through her veins. Who could the lady be, if not Carmen Gaylor? Who but Carmen would wait patiently for her coming, through a whole day?
For an instant Angela was tempted to answer: "I'm too tired to see any one this evening." But that would be cowardly. Besides, she was curious to see her visitor, whoever it might be.
"The lady's waiting in the veranda now," said a hotel clerk. "She's been here ever since morning, but she went away at lunch time and came back afterward. I don't know what she means to do to-night, for the train for Truckee will be leaving in a few minutes, and she hasn't engaged a room."
Angela went out on the veranda, feeling' a little tense and excited, but when a small, blue-frocked, gray-hatted figure, dejectedly lost in a big rocking-chair, was pointed out to her, excitement died while bewilderment grew.
Her first thought was that she had never seen this countrified-looking person before, but as her guest turned, raising to hers a pair of singularly intelligent, rather frightened eyes, she knew that she had met the same glance from the same eyes somewhere before.
The little woman's face was so pale, so tired, her whole personality so pathetic yet indomitable, that Angela's heart softened.
"How do you do?" she asked kindly. "I hear you have come to see me, so we must know each other, I'm sure——"