As he hurried out of the hut, Simon followed him, and Varley and Trafford were left alone.
Presently Trafford felt a tingling sensation in his arm, and saw that the blood was oozing from under his shirt-sleeve, but he paid no attention to it.
Varley went outside, and paced up and down. He saw now that Esmeralda still loved her husband, and that if he had shot him, he would have broken her heart, and so, perhaps, have killed her one way as surely as he had, in all probability, killed her with a bullet. Every now and then he went into the hut and gazed at the curtain with a terrible anxiety, and on one occasion he noticed the blood dropping from Trafford’s arm, and he pointed to it.
“You were hit?” he said.
Trafford looked stupidly at his arm.
“Yes; it is of no consequence,” he said, dully.
Varley got some water in a bowl, and offered to examine and bind up the wound. Trafford made to repulse him for a moment, then submitted with palpable indifference.
“It is a pity you didn’t kill me outright, Mr. Howard,” he said, bitterly. “It would have been more merciful.”
Varley made no response, but bound up the wound as if he were ministering to a close friend, and then went outside again.