"So soon—going?" She tried to keep the delight from her tone of surprise. He was the most unmanageable man she had ever known. His indifference had attracted her, even infatuated her, a year ago, but there were days since when she thought she hated him. "Yes, I will send Dolly. She loves you dearly, more even than she did poor Ted."
"We will not discuss my brother," he said, coldly. "But that will not prevent me caring for the child as he would have done."
"Irrespective of her mother?" she asked, halting in the door and looking over her shoulder at him.
"Certainly."
"Or—or of anything I might offend you in?"
"Nothing you choose to do will affect my promise to my brother," he said, impatient at her persistence.
"I may remind you of that some day," she said, gathering up her brocades. "If you do go, I hope that ghoul of a man, your padre, goes too. His silence makes him more like a spook than a man. The people have a holy horror of his piety."
After she had disappeared, Padre Libertad entered from an inner room and smiled grimly at Bryton.
"You are the sort of lover to be unhappy," he observed. "You can't console yourself with the other women. Half the men in the valley are mad over that woman, who would coquette with you if you did not turn ice when she comes near."
Keith stared out of the window toward the hills of the sea, tinged with the warm rose of the sunset. And the man in a priest's robe tried to laugh, and ended with a sigh.