“I forgive.”
“I will go away. I am afraid yet when the daughter comes. There is still hate here,” she pointed to her temples. “But it will be gone if I stay away. When Lupo goes to village he stays long time. It is better for me not to see him when he comes back. Until I learn, I will not see him no more. Good-by. I’m thankful to you.”
Mrs. Lupo departed, leaving the knife where it had fallen. It was on the tip of Miss Campbell’s tongue to say:
“You must not leave me alone.” But she checked herself. She doubted if she could exert her will another time like that. Already beads of perspiration stood out on her brows. A feeling of extreme lassitude crept over her and she slipped back into the hammock with a sensation of nausea. Then unconsciousness bound her with invisible cords and the brave little woman fainted dead away.
As Mrs. Lupo turned into the gallery, she glanced back but she only saw the train of Miss Campbell’s white wrapper fluttering from the hammock in the breeze.
There had been several loud raps downstairs, but to Miss Campbell, fighting her way slowly back to consciousness, it sounded hundreds of miles away, like spirit rapping; or perhaps it was the pounding of her own pulses. A man entered the living room. He was of medium height and spare with a lean brown face, and he was dressed as men usually dress for walking trips, in knickerbockers, heavy shoes laced well up the leg, a gray flannel shirt open at the neck with a brown silk tie. He wore a pith helmet; on his back was strapped a flat knapsack, and he carried a cane and a telescope. As he hurried through the living room, he tossed his helmet into a chair. There was a bald spot on his head fringed with reddish hair turning gray. His features were distinguished and because of a certain dignity with which he carried himself, a certain air of command and confidence, people were apt to wonder who he was.
“It was upstairs, I am certain,” the visitor remarked to himself, glancing into the empty kitchen and then mounting the rustic steps to the upper sleeping porch. With quick, comprehensive eyes he took in the five white cots standing in a row, on the porch the group of wicker chairs, the murderous looking knife, swaying on the tip of its shining blade, and lastly the high-backed canvas sleeping hammock from which trailed the train of a white muslin dress.
“Whew!” he exclaimed, under his breath.
For a moment it looked as if something unspeakably dreadful had happened that beautiful morning, and his fears were not set at rest even when he bounded past the knife and stood leaning over Miss Campbell’s half conscious form.
“Water,” she gasped faintly.