Justin passed an uneasy night, waking at intervals with a nervous start, and listening for something, he hardly knew what. Once, hearing Clayton stirring, he sat up in bed, shivering, ready to leap out and force his way into Clayton’s room, if it seemed necessary. He was alarmed, and he thought he had ground for his alarm. The coming of Sibyl to the valley he charged with being responsible for Clayton’s strange and changed manner. Sibyl’s malevolent influence seemed to lie over everything that came near her, like the blight of the fabled upas.
In the morning Clayton was very quiet, and even listless. He did not recur to the talk of the previous evening, though Justin momentarily expected him to, and was forging more arguments to combat this new and distressing theory which had wormed its way into Clayton’s troubled mind. During the day, when there were so many things to hold his attention, Clayton was not likely to give so much thought to Sibyl and his new conclusions; he had a number of patients, including Davison, who demanded his attention, and as a physician he threw himself into his work without reserve or thought of himself. Therefore, Justin felt easier when Clayton saddled his horse and rode away to visit a sick man, who was one of the newer settlers in the valley.
CHAPTER XIX
SIBYL AND CLAYTON
Returning that afternoon from a long and somewhat wearing journey, and being distressed and troubled, Clayton encountered Sibyl, as he turned into the Paradise trail.
She was mounted on a spirited bay horse, which she had obtained in the town, and was riding out to make a call on Mary Jasper. She drew her horse in, when she beheld Clayton, and sat awaiting him. He would have fled, when he saw her there, but that such an act savored of ungallantry and cowardice. So he continued on until he reached her side. She looked into his troubled face with a smile, pushing back her veil with a jeweled white hand from which she had drawn the glove. He had always admired the beauty of her hands.
“I thought it was you,” she said in her sweetest manner. “So I waited for you to come up.”
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, hoarsely.
“I have friends in the town, you know, and I came down to visit them; just now I am on my way to call on Mary. But it’s such a pleasure to see you, Curtis, that if you don’t object I’ll ride with you a short distance.”
The blood came into his face under that winning smile. He knew he ought to hate this woman, and he had a sense of self-contempt when he could not.
“I thought yesterday of calling on you,” she went on.