"Don't let us go farther—who knows but what we may encounter another bear?" she said roguishly; and he prepared a soft seat for her under the pines, by pulling handfuls of grass and heaping it up in one place.
She smiled to herself as she watched him; his awkwardness had left him, and for the comfort of one whom he only "liked pretty well," he was taking a great deal of pains, she thought. When she was seated, and had made him share the grass seat, the restraint suddenly returned, and he fell to stroking her hand again, and stammered something about her wrist being better.
"Yes," she affirmed, "and I mean to return to the city in a day or two."
He blushed like a girl. "May I go with you?" he asked; and then jumped at once into the midst of a "declaration"—which had evidently been gotten by heart—winding up by asking again, "and now may I go with you to San Francisco, Jenny? and will you marry me?"
Her eyes had been fixed on the lone bare crag away off across the valley; and the color in them had changed from light gray to deep black, and had faded again to a dull heavy gray.
"You may go to San Francisco, of course, though I shall not see you there. And 'I like you pretty well,' too; but you must not dare to dream that I could ever marry you."
A little linnet in the tree above them had hopped from branch to branch, and now sat on the lowest, almost facing them. When Jenny's voice, stone-cold and harsh, had ceased, he broke into a surprised little chirp, and then uttered quick, sharp notes of reproof or remonstrance. Jenny understood either the language of the bird, or what the wild, startled eyes looking into hers said, for the hand that had lain in his was tightly clinched beside her, telling a tale she would not let her face repeat.
When the lamp had been lighted in her cottage that night, she stood irresolute by the window from where she could see the Brodie-Perkins habitation. On her way to the dining-room she had come unawares on Si Perkins instructing a waiter to bring tea to their cottage; and though she had asked no question, her eyes had rested wistfully on the partner's stern face. Now she paced the room, her face flushed, her hands clasped above her aching head, then dropped again idle and nerveless by her side.
"It is too late," she said, at last; "and it can never, never be. Then why make myself wretched over it?" and with a sudden revulsion of feeling she raised the curtain and looked steadily over to the other cottage. "It is only the law of reprisals, after all, Ben Brodie! To be sure you did not break my heart—but—that other man—and—you are all men." Her voice had died to a whisper; and, drawing writing material toward her at the table, she was in the midst of her letter before the vengeful light died out of her eyes. Once she laid her head on her arm and sobbed bitterly; but she finished the letter, closed and directed it, and turned down the light so that she could not be seen going from the cottage. The night air was damp and chilly, and before descending the three wooden steps that led from the little stoop to the ground, her unsteady hand sought the dress-pocket to drop her letter in; and then she drew the shawl and hood close about her.
She shuddered the next morning, as she threw a last look back into the room from which her trunk and baggage had already been taken, and she muttered something about the dreariness of an empty room and an empty heart. But when her numerous dear friends came to the stage to bid a last farewell, Jenny's face looked so radiant that many a one turned with secret envy from the woman to whom life must seem like one continuous holiday. Si Perkins, with eyebrows drawn deep down, was attentively studying a newspaper by the open window of the reading-room; and when Jenny threw a look back from the stage, she fancied that a trembling hand was working at the blinds of the two partners' cottage; and the sallow, ghastly face, and wild, startled eyes of yesterday, rose up reproachfully before her.