“Benson? Did you write to him?”
The surprise in Power’s voice was not feigned. He was beginning to see now something of the fixed purpose which had governed her actions during the past twenty-four hours.
“Yes,” she said composedly. “It was hardly necessary, but I wanted to dispose of my last doubt; though in my own mind I was sure of the ground already. My father went straight to Denver on receipt of that letter, and, of course, chanced to travel by the same train as Hugh Marten, the man to whom the whole amount of the mortgage was little more than a day’s income. Marten was gracious, the lawyer-man adamant. Within a week I was told of a new suitor, and of my father’s certain and complete ruin if I refused him.... Ah, me! How I wept!... When did you post your first letter, Derry?”
“Two days after I arrived at the placer mine,” he replied unhesitatingly. The chief revelation in Nancy’s story was her crystal-clear knowledge of facts which, he flattered himself, he had kept from her ken. Then his heart leaped at the thought that she had known of his love from the night they met in the dining-room of the Ocean House. But he choked back the rush of sentiment; for she was demanding his close attention.
“And I wrote on or about that same date,” she went on. “My father—Heaven forgive him!—stole your letters to me; but the scheme for suppressing my letters to you must have been concocted before you went to Sacramento. Such foul actions are unforgivable! I, for one, refuse to be bound by the fetters which they forged. I come to you, my dear, as truly your wife, as unstained in soul and body, as though Hugh Marten had never existed!”
A sudden note of passion vibrated in her voice, and Power realized, by a lightning flash of intuition, with what vehement decision she had severed already the knot which seemed to bind her so tightly. He fancied it was her due that he should endeavor to relax an emotional strain which was becoming unbearable.
“It’s a mighty good thing we are Americans,” he said. “Here divorce is neither hard to obtain nor highly objectionable in its methods. We—at any rate, I—must consult some lawyer of experience. The laws differ in the various states. That which is murder and sudden death in Ohio is a five-dollar proposition in Illinois; but the legal intellect will throw light on our difficulty. Meanwhile——”
He stopped awkwardly, aware that, although she was apparently listening to his words, they were making no impression on her senses. A sudden silence fell, and the hitherto unheeded noises of the night smote on his ears with uncanny loudness. The leisured plash of waves so tiny that they might not be dignified by the name of breakers swelled into a certain strength and volume as his range of hearing spread, and the faint cries of invisible sea-fowl now jarred loudly on the quietude of nature. A pebble rolled down the cliff, and he could mark its constantly accelerated leaps until it reached the shingle with a crash which, even to a case-hardened pebble, betokened damage.
“Meanwhile——” prompted Nancy, in a still, small voice.
So she had followed what he was saying. What was it that he meant to say? Something about the rocks and shoals that lay ahead before he could take her to some safe anchorage. Nevertheless, he shied off at a tangent, and chose haphazard the one topic which his sober judgment might have avoided.