The Judge walks over to his telegraph office, for there is a post, telegraph, and quite a mining settlement now on the Lagunitas grant.
He sends a cable despatch to Paris to his agent, briefly:
"Stop work. Report acceptable. Come back. Take your time leisurely, East. Well pleased."
He does not want any misplaced zeal of his spy to alarm Natalie. As the year 1866 rolls on, the regular reports, business drafts and details as to Isabel Valois are the burden of the correspondence. Natalie's heart is silent. Has she one? She has not urged him to come back; she has not pressed the claims of her child. His agent returns and amplifies the general reports, but he has no new facts.
The clerk drops into his usual life. He is not curious as to the Madame. "Some collateral business of the Judge, probably," is his verdict.
While the stamps rattle away in the Lagunitas quartz mills, Judge Hardin takes an occasional run to the city by the bay. The legislative season approaches. Senator Hardin's rooms at the Golden Eagle are the centre of political power. Railroads are worming their way into politics. Franchises and charters are everywhere sought. Over the feasts served by Hardin's colored retainers, he cements friendships across old party lines.
As Christmas approaches in this year, the Judge receives a letter from Natalie de Santos which rouses him from his bed of roses. He steadies his nerves with a glass of the best cognac, as he reads this fond epistle:
I have waited for you to refer to the future of our child. I will not waste words. If you wished to make me happy, you would have, before now, provided for her. I do not speak of myself. You have been liberal enough to me. I am keeping up the position you indicated. My child is now old enough to ask meaning questions, to be informed of her place in the world and to be educated for it. You spoke of a settlement for her. If anything should happen to me, what would be her future? Isabel will be of course, in the future, a great lady. There is nothing absolutely my own. I am dependent on you. What I asked you, Philip, you have not given me: the name of wife. It is for her, not for myself, I asked it. I have made myself worthy of the position I would hold. You know our past. I wish absolutely now, to know my child's destiny. If you will not do the mother justice, what will you do for the child? Whose name shall she bear? What shall she have?
Philip, I beg you to act in these matters and to remember that, if I once was Hortense Duval, I now am NATALIE DE SANTOS.
Danger signals. Red and flaring they burn before Hardin's steady eyes. What does she mean? Is her last clause a threat? Woman! Perfidious woman!