She told him that she did not know, and tried to coax him back to quietness.
"There is something," he insisted, dropping his head down again wearily.
"Perhaps there is," she admitted unwillingly.
He lay thinking for a while, then had her send the striker for Ellton, who promptly, and awkwardly, replied to the anxious question as to what might be the trouble, that he was not quite sure, but perhaps it had to do with these—"these" being a small roll of newspaper clippings he took from his portfolio.
Landor looked them over and gave them back contemptuously. "Well?" he said, "there's nothing new in all that. It's devilish exasperating, but it's old as Hamilcar. I made an enemy of a fellow from Tucson, reporter named Stone, over at the San Carlos Agency a few years ago. He's been waiting to roast me ever since. There must be something else."
The adjutant agreed reluctantly. "I think there is. It wouldn't surprise me if some one had been talking. I can't get at it. But you must not bother about it. It will blow over."
As an attempt at consolation, it failed. Landor fairly sprang into a sitting posture, with a degree of impulsiveness that was most unusual with him. His eyes glistened from the greenish circles around them. "Blow over! Good Lord! do you suppose I'll let it blow over? It's got to be sifted to the bottom. And you know that as well as I do." He lay weakly back again, and Felipa came to the edge of the bed and, sitting upon it, stroked his head with her cool hand.
Ellton ventured some assistance. "I do know this much, that the C. O. got a telegram from some Eastern paper, asking if the reports of your cowardice as given in the territorial press were true."
Landor asked eagerly what he had answered.