“Deny, deny all you like! Whether you deny or not, the thing will have been said. Next Sunday the whole city, the whole state will be reading it—how you’re Shackleton’s daughter and your mother was Dan Moreau’s mistress. But say one word—one little word to me, and not a syllable will be written, not a whisper spoken. On one side there’s happiness and luxury and love, and on the other disgrace and poverty—not your disgrace alone, but your father’s, your mother’s—”
With a cry of rage and despair Mariposa tried to tear herself from him. Nature aided her, for at the same moment a savage gust of wind seized the umbrella and wrenched it this way and that. Instinctively he loosened his hold on her to grasp it, and in that one moment she tore herself away from him. He gripped at the flapping wing of her cloak, and caught it. But the strain was too much for the cheap metal clasp, which broke, and Mariposa slipped out of it and flew into the fury of the rain, leaving the cloak in his hand.
The roar of many waters and the shouting of the wind obliterated the sound of her flying feet. The darkness, shot through with the blurred faces of lamps or the long rays from an occasional uncurtained pane, in a moment absorbed her black figure. Essex stood motionless, stunned at the suddenness of her escape, the sodden cloak trailing from his hand. Then shaken out of all reason by rage, not knowing what he intended doing, he started in pursuit.
She feared this and her burst of bravery was exhausted. As she ran up the steep street having only the darkness to hide her, her heart seemed shriveled with the fear of him.
Suddenly she heard the thud of his feet behind her. An agony of fright seized her. The Garcia house was at least two blocks farther on, and she knew he would overtake her before then. A black doorway with a huddle of little trees, formless and dark now, loomed close by, and toward this she darted, crouching down among the small wet trunks of the shrubs and parting their foliage with shaking hands.
There was a lamp not far off and in its rays she saw him running up, still holding the cloak in a black bunch over his arm. He stopped, just beyond where she cowered, and looked irresolutely up and down. The lamplight fell on his face, and in certain angles she saw it plainly, pale and glistening with moisture, all keen and alert with a look of attentive cunning. He moved his head this way and that, evidently trusting more to hearing than to sight. His eyes, no longer half veiled in cold indifference, swept her hiding-place with the preoccupation of one who listens intently. He looked to her like some thwarted animal harkening for the steps of his prey. Her terror grew with the sight of him. She thought if he had approached the bushes she would have swooned before he reached them.
Presently he turned and went down the hill. In the pause his reason had reasserted itself, and he felt that to hound her down with more threats and reproaches was useless folly.
But, with her, reason and judgment were hopelessly submerged by terror. She crept out from among the shrubs with white face and trembling limbs, and fled up the hill in a wild, breathless race, hearing Essex in every sound. The rain had dripped on her through the bushes, and these last two blocks under its unrestrained fury soaked her to the skin.
Her haunting terror did not leave her till she had rushed up the stairs and opened the door of the glass porch. She was fumbling in her pocket for the latch-key, when the inner door was opened and Barron stood in the aperture, the lighted hall behind him.
“What on earth has delayed you?” he said sharply. “They’re all at supper. I was just going down to Mrs. Willers’ to see what was keeping you.”