Lola was not listening. She had a burning wish to escape from the soft buzzing of the señora's words, which, a velvety, sting-infested swarm, whirred around her bee-like, seeking hive and home.
"Don't think I believe anything against tia!" she heard herself saying sternly, as the gate slipped from her impetuous hand and she rushed away, the quarry of emotions which no speed, however swift, could outdistance.
BEWILDERING
SATISFACTION
CHAPTER SIX
BEWILDERING SATISFACTION
Lola found herself walking up the cañon, between the rocky hills beside the dry arroyo. Summer dust whitened the road, and rose to her tread in alkaline clouds. It was warm, too, under the remorseless Colorado sun, but nothing touched Lola. She was struggling with a thing that was half anguish and half anger, and that lifted upon her a face more and more convincing in its ugliness.
It seemed impossible to doubt that Jane had indeed worked the wrong of which Señora Vigil accused her—although Jane's own word, and no word of the señora's, bore this conviction to Lola's breast. Jane had faltered in the trust which she had assumed, and now, confronted with the embarrassment of facing Lola's father in a plain confession of her delinquency, she hesitated and was miserable and afraid and reluctant. Rather than state her situation she would even keep Lola from school.
"It isn't that I care for that!" throbbed Lola. It was not the stoppage of her own course, indeed, although this was a misery, but the loss of trust in all humanity which distrust of Jane seemed to the girl to inflict upon her. If Jane were not true, none could be; and the suspicion and unrest rioted back again to the bosom which belief in Jane and the world had softened and calmed.