Webster laughed. “Well, be patient, Miss Ruey, and I'll give him back to you with considerably more money than he will require for your joint comfort. Billy in financial distress is a joy forever, but Billy in a top hat and a frock coat on the sunny side of Easy Street will be absolutely irresistible.”
“He's a darling. Ever since my arrival he has dedicated his life to keeping me amused.” She rose. “Despite your wickedness, Mr. Webster, I am going to be good to you. Billy and I always have five o'clock tea here in the veranda. Would you care to come to my tea-party?”
“Nothing could give me greater pleasure,” he assured her.
She nodded brightly to him. “I'm going to run up to my room and put some powder on my nose,” she explained.
“But you'll return before five o'clock?” Webster was amazed to hear himself plead.
“You do not deserve such consideration, but I'll come back in about twenty minutes,” she answered and left him in the spot where we find him at the opening of this chapter, in pensive mood, jabbing his Malacca stick into a crack in the tiled floor.
Presently Webster shuddered. “Good heavens,” he soliloquized, “what a jackass-play I made when I declined to admit we had met before. What harm could I have accomplished by admitting it? I must be getting old, because I'm getting cowardly. I'm afraid of myself! When I met that girl last month, it was in a region that God forgot—and I was a human caterpillar, which a caterpillar is a hairy, lowly, unlovely thing that crawls until it is metamorphosed into a butterfly and flies. Following out the simile, I am now a human butterfly, not recognizable as the caterpillar to one woman out of ten million; yet she pegs me out at first. Gad, but she's a remarkable girl! And now I'm in for it. I've aroused her curiosity; and being a woman, she will not rest until she has fathomed the reason back of my extraordinary conduct. I think I'm going to be smeared with confusion. A spineless man like you, Johnny Webster, stands as much show in a battle of wits with that woman as a one-legged white man at a coon cakewalk. I'm afraid of her, and I'm afraid of myself. I'm glad I'm going up to the mine. I'll go as quickly as I can, and stay as long as I can.”
As Webster viewed the situation, his decision to see as little as possible of Dolores during his brief stay in Sobrante was a wise one. The less he saw of her (he told himself), the better for his peace of mind, for he was forty years old, and he had never loved before. For him this fever that burned in his blood, this delicious agony that throbbed in his heart—and all on the very ghost of provocation—were so many danger-signals, heralds of that grand passion which, coming to a man of forty, generally lasts him the remainder of his natural existence.
“This certainly beats the Dutch!” he murmured, and beyond the peradventure of a doubt, it did. He reflected that all of his life the impulses of his generous nature had been his undoing. In an excess of paternalism he had advised Billy to marry the girl and not permit himself to develop into a homeless, childless, loveless man such as Exhibit A, there present; following his natural inclination to play any game,' red or black, he had urged Billy to marry the girl immediately and had generously offered a liberal subsidy to make the marriage possible, for he disliked any interference in his plans to make those he loved happy. And now——
Webster was forced to admit he was afraid of himself. His was the rapidly disappearing code of the old unfettered West, that a man shall never betray his friend in thought, word, or deed. To John Stuart Webster any crime against friendship was the most heinous in all the calendar of human frailty; even to dream of slipping into Billy's shoes now would be monstrous; yet Webster knew he could not afford a test of strength between his ancient friendship for Billy and his masculine desire for a perfect mate. Remained then but one course: