“I was asleep, and heard nothing of it,” he said. “So that man Keats said they had plenty of evidence! You are going away? I wouldn’t, girl; there may have been a mistake. If I were you——”
Her glance of horror brought Parsons’ protests to an end quickly. He, too, she thought, was under the spell of Taylor’s magnetism. That, or every person she knew was a prey to those vicious and fawning instincts to which she had yielded—the subordination of principle to greed—of ease, or of wealth, or of place.
She shuddered with sudden repugnance.
For the first time she had a doubt of Parsons—a revelation of that character which he had always succeeded in keeping hidden from her. She drew away from him and walked to the door, telling him that he might stay, but that she did not intend to remain in the house another minute.
She found a horse in the stable—two, in fact—the ones Taylor had insisted belonged to her and Martha. She threw saddle and bridle on hers, and was mounting, when she saw Martha standing at the stable door, watching her.
“Yo’ uncle says you goin’ away, honey—how’s that? An’ he done say somethin’ about Mr. Squint killin’ your father. Doan’ you b’lieve no fool nonsense like that! Mr. Squint wouldn’t kill nobody’s father! That deputy man ain’t nothin’ but a damn, no-good liar!”
Martha’s vehemence was genuine, but not convincing; and the girl mounted the horse, hanging the handbag from the pommel of the saddle.
“You’s sure goin’!” screamed the negro woman, frantic with a dread that she was in danger of losing the girl for whom she had formed a deep affection.
“You wait—you hear!” she demanded; “if you leave this house I’s a goin’, too!”
Marion waited until Martha led the other horse out, and then, with the negro woman following, she rode eastward on the Dawes trail, not once looking back.