These conversations caused Julian ample food for meditation as he rode back towards Desolada in the coolness of the dawn--a roseate and primrose hued dawn--after having left Beatrix Spranger at her father's house.
What was Madame Carmaux's influence over Sebastian? Why was she so strong an ally of his? And for answer to his self-communings, he could find only one. The answer that this woman, who had been bereft in one short year of the husband she had hurriedly espoused in her bitterness of desolation as well as of the little infant daughter who had come as a solace to her misery, had transferred all the affection left in her heart to the boy she found at Desolada; no matter whom that boy might be.
An affection that year following year had caused to ripen until, at last, her very existence had become bound up in his. This, combined with the fact that Desolada had been her home, and that home a comfortable one, over which she had ruled as mistress for so many years, was the only answer he could find.
All was very still as he rode into the back part of the mansion where the stables were--for it was now but little after four o'clock, and consequently there was hardly daylight yet--when, unsaddling the mustang himself, he closed the stable door again and prepared to make his way into the house. This was easy enough to do, since, in such a climate, windows were never closed at night, and, beyond the persianas, which could easily be lifted aside, there was no bar to any one's entrance.
Yet early as it was or, as it should be said, perhaps, far advanced as the night was, Sebastian had not yet sought his bed. Instead, he seemed to have decided on taking whatever rest he might require in the great saloon in which he seemed to pass the principal part of his time when at home. He was asleep now in the large Singapore chair he always sat in--it being inside the room at this time instead of outside on the veranda--possibly for fear of any night dews that--even in this climate--will sometimes arise; he being near the table on which was the never-failing bottle of Bourbon whisky. "The young man's companion," as Sebastian had more than once hilariously termed it.
But that was not the only bottle, the only liquid, on the table by his side.
For there stood also by Sebastian's hand a stumpy, neckless bottle which looked as if it might once have been part of the stock-in-trade of some chemist's shop--a bottle which was half full of a liquid of the faintest amber or hay-colour. And, to his astonishment, he likewise saw standing on the table a small retort, a thing he had never supposed was likely to be known to Sebastian.
"Well!" he thought to himself as he moved slowly along the balcony to the open door, not being desirous of waking the sleeping man, "you are indeed a strange man, if 'strange' is the word to apply to you. I wonder what you are dabbling in chemistry for now? Probably no good!"