In her own room, the door slammed and locked, Hilda faced the situation. She fairly glowed and palpitated with the rage that ran like fire in her veins and seemed to burn out timidity and indecision. She’d done it now. Pearse had asked her to stay—and she’d told those people downstairs that she was going to leave. She would leave, too. If Pearse knew, he’d want her to leave. He’d want her to walk right out of the house.

Without stopping to change from her riding dress she hurried from closet to bureau drawers, pulling out things, throwing them on the bed, folding them, dragging out her trunk, her valises, and beginning to pack.

Movement in Maybelle’s room; but the door between wasn’t even touched. Well, she didn’t want to talk to Maybelle. She had nothing to say to any of them. She was going home.

She worked more systematically now. The supper bell rang. Maybelle left her room and went down, humming, clattering on the stair. Then Mrs. Marchbanks herself came to call Hilda. Without opening her door Hilda repeated that she didn’t want any supper.

“Not pouting, are you?”

“No, I’m not pouting.”

“Of course you aren’t. Well, come down when you get hungry, then,” Mrs. Marchbanks said finally. “I’ll leave something on the table for you.” And she went away.

Sounds of the household at supper down there; then people moving about, talking. After a while, they began to come upstairs, the children first, Mrs. Marchbanks with them, stopping to tap at the door and ask if Hilda was all right.

“Yes. All right, thank you, Mrs. Marchbanks.”

The crispness of her tone seemed to send Mrs. Marchbanks away pretty promptly. Later Miss Ferguson’s slow, precise tread, its hesitation at her door, then the going on. Hilda was glad of that. Miss Ferguson was a good sort, she meant well; but Hilda didn’t want to see her now. Maybelle in her room again, moving about softly; the colonel’s heavy step; sounds of him locking up; he and Fayte on the stair, quarreling as usual, but in low tones.

And then the house grew still, except for those light, almost stealthy movements in the next room. Finally they, too, ceased. It was after ten o’clock, and Hilda’s work was done, when she suddenly realized that she should have taken off her riding clothes and packed them in the trunk. Well, it was locked, and strapped; they’d have to go in the bag now. She gave one last look around, to be sure she had forgotten nothing, then went to the window. That resurrection plant Maybelle had said she’d give her when she went home; she wanted it; the queer things didn’t grow over on the plains of Lame Jones County. Yet—she didn’t like to open the door and ask. Probably Maybelle was already asleep. She leaned out and looked; that other window beside hers was dark, and there sat the little plant in its bowl. Hilda made a long arm, reached around and transferred it to her own sill. She emptied the water in which it had grown green, and left it to dry out so that it would be ready to carry away in the morning.

Through all the flame and rush of her, the thought of Pearse had never been absent from her a moment. At first there was a desperate, irrational idea that she would see him before she left. Then, as the mere physical work began to clear her mind, she knew that she couldn’t do this. She’d have to write. After that, as she moved quietly, swiftly to and fro, her eyes went continually to the little table where pens and paper lay, her letter to Pearse forming itself in her mind. She wanted him to know that, if it had seemed possible, she would have stayed here as he asked her to. She must beg him to come over to the Sorrows. No—she shook her head above the dress she was folding—hadn’t been able to do a thing with him any of the times when he was right there. It—crowding paper into slipper toes—it was different now. She’d say—she’d say—

Everything done, she went over and sat down. The sheet before her, the pencil in her hand, she sat a long time staring, not seeing it. The furious activity of her moments of packing and getting ready, the hot anger that had sustained them, were gone. Cold doubts huddled around the edge of her mind; they clamored for attention. Suppose Pearse wouldn’t come over to the Sorrows? Suppose he changed back into that old Pearse she had known, who could be hard and indifferent? If she was here— When she could see him— But she was risking all in going away and trusting to a letter—

She finally began, wrote rapidly for a while, stopped, frowned at what she had written, tore it up, and sat thinking. This whole round of action she repeated several times. Then in desperation she dashed down a few lines, signed, folded them, got them into an envelope—put her head down on the table and began to cry.

It wasn’t noisy grief, just the slow tears of exhaustion. She must have cried herself to sleep.

What was it waked her? She sat up suddenly in the dark. Her lamp was out. Dim moonlight made a gray square of her window, and as she stared at it, there came once more the rattle of gravel against the glass—then a low, guarded whistle.

The house was still. It must be some time in the small hours. She didn’t dare strike a match to look at her watch. She stole across and peered out between the curtains. Over there by the cottonwoods that gave the place its name—wasn’t that a mounted man in their shadow? Pearse! It must be. It couldn’t be any one else! She waved a hasty signal, then slipped over, got her own door open as silently as she could, and hurried down stairs.

As she struggled with the fastening of the front door, she was desperately afraid he might have been there longer than she knew—be discouraged—leave without seeing her. But she’d waved to him from the window. She thought he answered. Oh—the door gave at last, but noisily.

She crossed the court on winged feet; some one caught her in a rough embrace. A face was pushed down against hers. Some one whispered,

“You made a lot of noise getting out, girlie. Where’s your bag?”

She drew back, bewildered, scared, answering mechanically: “It’s upstairs.”

“Well—for the Lord’s sake!”

That wasn’t Pearse’s voice—even in a whisper Hilda knew it wasn’t. She’d known this wasn’t Pearse as soon as he touched her. Who was it? Who did he think she was? She tried to pull free. As her head went back, her eye caught the row of upper windows. The resurrection plant changed from Maybelle’s sill to her own—the gravel on the pane—she’d blundered into some arrangement of Maybelle’s!

“I’m not—” she began; but the man’s fierce whisper interrupted,

“Shut up—whoever you are! Do you want to give the whole thing away?”

His grip on her arm dragged her back into the shadow. She saw a light flash up and go out in Maybelle’s room, the movement of a window-curtain there. The man beside her saw it, too. But now there was noise in the house. He loosed his hold on her arm and backed away toward his pony. Hilda stood where she was and looked while the house over there became all lit up. What should she do? Slowly she went toward the side door, and, as she stood hesitating there, some one tore it open and stood in it—Colonel Lee Marchbanks, a bathrobe pulled on over his night-clothes.

“What the devil’s this?”

“Oh, Hilda!” That was Mrs. Marchbanks, following him, getting ahead of him and taking hold of her. Fayte came from somewhere. Miss Ferguson was on the porch. The lights from the windows flickered over their faces. The sound of galloping hoofs came from the trail—two ponies, plainly.

“Who were those people?” the colonel demanded.

“Only one people, I guess,” Fayte explained jeeringly, when she didn’t answer. “Masters brought a led pony for her.”

“Masters? Was that Pearse Masters?”

“Let me pass, Colonel Marchbanks.” Hilda pushed by, the rest of them trailing after her.

In the hall they all came together, and the colonel, who had tripped on one of his flapping slippers and come up angrier than ever, exploded,

“You ought to be ashamed, Hilda! That young hound—here on my place—after he’d been as good as ordered off of it—you dressed and ready to run away with him! Oh, you can’t lie out of it, young lady; any fool could see what was up. May—” Hilda saw that Maybelle was halfway down the stairs, a kimono pulled on, one bedroom slipper and one riding boot, which latter nobody but herself seemed to notice—“May, go back and step into this girl’s room; see if she isn’t already packed to leave.”

“She—she is, Pa,” Maybelle was almost whimpering. “I’ve just been in there. Everything she’s got is packed up.”

Then she was down the stairs in a rush, her arms around Hilda’s neck, whispering,

“Don’t. Don’t give me away. Oh—Hilda! It won’t make any difference to you. You don’t want to stay here, anyhow. But—”

Hilda pushed her off and turned to Colonel Marchbanks. Of course, Maybelle’s things were packed, too; under that kimono Maybelle was dressed, ready to have gone with that man.

“What Maybelle says is true,” she told them all, “I’m going to leave in the morning.”

“You’ll leave for Lame Jones County in the morning,” the colonel growled.

“Certainly. That’s what I mean,” Hilda agreed.

“Fayte, go dress,” said his father; “I want you to ride in to the station and send a telegram to Pearsall. The rest of you get upstairs to bed.”