She hesitated. “It would be too dangerous for me to come up here in the daytime. Trouble would follow.”
“Come at dusk. You know I am no murderer.”
“I don’t know it,” she persisted stubbornly. It was her final protest.
“Count, some day, on knowing it.”
CHAPTER XV
CROSSING A DEEP RIVER
A grizzly bear hidden among the haystacks back of the corral would have given Nan much less anxiety than de Spain secreted in the heart of the Morgan stronghold. But as she hurried home, fearful of encountering an early rider who should ask questions, it seemed as if she might, indeed, find some way of getting rid of the troublesome foe without having it on her conscience that she had starved a wounded man to death, or that he had shot some one of her people in getting away.
Her troubled speculations were reduced now almost to wondering when de Spain would leave, and, disinclined though she felt to further parley, she believed he would go the sooner if she were to consent to see him again. Everything he had said to her seemed to unsettle her mind and to imperil impressions concerning him that she felt it dangerous, or at least treasonable, to part with. To believe anything but the worst of a man whom she heard cursed and abused continually by her 193 uncles, cousins, and their associates and retainers, seemed a monstrous thing––and every effort de Spain made to dislodge her prejudices called for fresh distrust on her part. What had most shaken her convictions––and it would come back to her in spite of everything she could do to keep it out of her mind––was the recollection of the murder of his father, the tragic death of his mother. As for the facts of his story, somehow she never thought of questioning them. The seal of its dreadful truth he carried on his face.