“I wish I had. I have wanted to so many times,” she said, and again wiping the drops from his face and hands she left the room and came to me, her voice shaking and her eyes full of tears as she said: “I have told him and I am going to tell you. I am the girl in the will, and have been acting as bad a lie as Ananias and Sapphira ever acted, and ought to be killed.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, and she repeated the story to me as she had to Rex, giving no blame to any one but herself.
I was too much surprised to speak at first, nor had I time, for seeing Mr. McPherson entering the house she darted from me exclaiming:
“I must tell him, too. I mean to make thorough work.”
She was gone like the whirlwind and following Mr. McPherson into the library she began at once, talking so rapidly that he could scarcely follow her, and some things she repeated twice before he understood her. His first impulse was to swear when he fairly got it through his head that a big joke had been played upon them. He didn’t like practical jokes, and this least of all, and said so rather emphatically, asking what excuse she had, while Rena sobbed piteously.
“I’ve no excuse,” she said, “and it was all my fault. I persuaded Tom and Irene. She is not to blame.”
“Irene,” the old Scotchman growled, growing more and more indignant. “She is as deep in it as you. Yes, deeper,” he continued, as his thoughts went over the past and he recalled Irene’s manner whenever he met her. “Didn’t she let Rex make love to her, knowing he thought she was somebody else, and didn’t she make a fool of me, who paid her all sorts of attention because I thought she was to be Rex’s wife? I tell you, I don’t like it!”
Colin’s was rather a fierce nature when roused, and remembering his warm championship of Irene on the supposition that she was the girl, he now experienced a revulsion of feeling with regard to her, knowing that she had done more to deceive him than Rena had. He had been very attentive to her as the prospective mistress of his house and she had not only received his attentions, knowing what he meant, “but egged me on,” he said, “yes, by George! egged me on and carried herself as if she owned the ranch, making me ridiculous to you and Giles and making a fool of Rex, who never seemed to hanker after her much, but who fell into her trap at last, looked in the well and thought he saw her face and broke the glass all to smash. I’m glad of that, and I’ll have the cussed well covered up. Yes, I will. Saw her! By the great horn spoon, saw me just as much! Lord Harry! to think she is just Irene from Claremont; and I made him write her a letter which he went to post in the heat and so got a sunstroke, or something worse. What does he think of it all, I wonder?”
He did not wait for Rena to answer, but strode toward the door of the sick-room, which he entered, and before I could stop him, burst out to Rex:
“A fine brace of fools we are and I made you send that letter and helped compose it; but I’ll go and get it back and tell her that was a joke, if you say so. Why, she lives in Claremont, a little out-of-the-way factory town, with rocks as thick as huckleberries. I’ve been there—went into one of the mills to see a feller who once worked for me. And, yes, by George! I remember the overseer was a little crusty about my calling off the man from his work. His name was Burdick. I thought I’d heard it somewhere before Sandy hunted up the girl, or I hunted her for him. That was her father, I know—tall and fair like her, and I’ll bet she has worked there, too, and I wanted you to marry her! Oh, Lord, what a fool I have been to make you send that letter, but I’ll stop it.”