"Mr. Hilliard, of course. You see"—desperately—"I'm school-teacher at Lucky Star City, close to his place. All the land there and the big gusher were his. When he came back in June I was at Lucky Star, and we were introduced. He remembered my face dimly, more I guess because he couldn't forget even the least thing associated with you than for any other reason. Since then we've got to be friends."
Angela did not speak, even when Sara Wilkins made a slight hesitating pause. Her heart was beating too fast and thickly for words to come, and, besides, there seemed to be nothing to say yet, until she had heard more.
"Don't think," Sara went on, gathering courage, "that he confided in me in any ordinary way. I just couldn't bear you should do him that injustice. If you did I should have done harm instead of good by coming all this way to see you. But the very first day I met him at Lucky Star I asked about you, and I—saw; though he only said he believed you were in San Francisco—that he was heart-broken about you. Even at Santa Barbara I couldn't help making up a romance round you both—you so beautiful and somehow like a great lady, though you didn't put on any airs at all; he so handsome and splendid, like a hero in some book of the West. It was weeks before we mentioned you again—he and I—though I saw a lot of him at Lucky Star. He was kind, and it was holidays, so I hadn't much to do except read books he lent me."
Still Angela said nothing, though it was evident that Miss Wilkins would have been thankful at this stage for some leading question which might help her over a difficult place. Angela could not now give the help she had once offered. Rather was she in need of it herself. She sat waiting, her eyes disconcertingly fixed upon the other woman's flushed face. But that was because she could not bring herself to look away from it.
"Before we spoke of you again, what do you think he'd been doing?" the school-teacher went on, almost fiercely.
"Oh, I can hardly tell you, it's so sad! If you're the sweet woman that in spite of everything I think you are, you'll be sorry all the way through to your heart. He—he hired a wretched humbug of a man who pretended to be an English swell to teach him manners, so that he could be a little worthier of you. He, Nick Hilliard, the noblest gentleman that ever drew breath, to stoop to learning from a little thing who called itself Montagu Jerrold. He did it because of what you said to him."
"Oh!" cried Angela, her cheeks scarlet. "I said nothing—nothing which could make him feel that I didn't think him a gentleman. I——"
"That's what I told him," Sara broke in. "I knew his reason for employing Jerrold, because he made up a sort of allegory about a moth loving a star and trying to fly up to heaven and be near her, or something like that. I said that a real star couldn't be stupid enough to think him a moth, or, anyway, not a common one. And he said, 'That's just what she does think me, common.' I knew he meant you, though he didn't speak your name then. And I thought to myself, 'She didn't look like a silly doll stuffed with sawdust,' I did you the justice to believe that a great lady, experienced in the world, would know and appreciate a man. I'm just nobody at all, Mrs. May; but even I'm clever enough for that. I'm sure as fate, if I were acquainted with all the best kings and princes there are in the world, I couldn't find a better gentleman than Nick Hilliard. Yet according to him you didn't have the eyes to see what he was worth. You not only turned him down, but turned him down saying he was too common for you."
Angela could stand no more. It was as if the fierce little woman in dusty blue serge had struck her in the face. She sprang up, very white, her eyes blazing. "It is not true," she said in a low voice. "He couldn't have told you I said that."
"He told me you said just the same thing: that he was 'impossible.' That was the word—a cruel, cruel word."