Without waiting to hear what she would attempt to say, I fled like Lot from the City of Destruction. But fatal curiosity I had not, and I cared not how the Sandersons writhed in the fire of my indignation.
My only desire was to get out of the house and never see them again.
As I left the hotel the groom in waiting advanced to drive me home.
"I will walk," I said curtly, spurning even this last attention from the woman I had left.
Later in Pasadena, when I heard the departing shriek of the Overland, with its echo flung fatefully back from the mountains as the train rounded a curve, I knew that the Sandersons had cut loose forever from the complications of their San Gabriel episode.
In justice to Sidney, I believe him to have been the better of two bad people. I believe that in his sensual selfishness he would willingly have resigned his mother's ambitions in regard to a marriage with Gladys Carpenter, glad to enjoy, for a time at least, the simple fascinations and marvelous beauty of Mariposilla.
The man was so perfectly carnal, so easily bored by the least intellectual superiority in a woman, that I believe he would have remained true to his own choice, had it not been for his mother's threats and positive command to marry, if possible, the three millions at hand.
I know that the thought of the classic, high-bred, sorrow-bowed Gladys must have been a cold shock, after his recent associations with Mariposilla. He must have remembered long how the Spanish girl adored him openly with all her young heart. Perhaps even as he went away the man held in cowardly reserve the possibilities of a refusal from the heiress.
I knew without being told that the conflict between the mother and son had been bitter. The mother had conquered, but Sidney had managed to write a parting note to his abandoned sweetheart, which the poor child unfortunately received. His slender promises only delayed her final despair, making it hopeless for those about her to arouse her pride or to graft in her trusting heart a proper disdain for the false lover.
I afterwards read his cowardly note, and saw clearly its import.