Another Message

Hamlin sank back on the bench and leaned his head on his hand. Had anything been accomplished by this interview? One thing, at least--he had thoroughly demonstrated that the charm once exercised over his imagination by this beautiful woman had completely vanished. He saw her now as she was--heartless, selfish, using her spell of beauty for her own sordid ends. If there had been left a shred of romance in his memory of her, it was now completely shattered. Her coolness, her adroit changing of moods, convinced him she was playing a game. What game? Nothing in her words had revealed its nature, yet the man instinctively felt that it must involve Molly McDonald. Laboriously he reviewed, word by word, each sentence exchanged, striving to find some clue. He had pricked her in the Gaskins affair, there was no doubt of that; she knew, or at least suspected, the party firing the shot. She denied at first having been married to Le Fevre, and yet later had been compelled to acknowledge that marriage. There then was a deliberate falsehood, which must have been told for a purpose. What purpose? Did she imagine it would make any difference with him, or did she seek to shield Le Fevre from discovery? The latter reason appeared the more probable, for the man must have been in the neighborhood lately, else where did that haversack come from?

So engrossed was Hamlin with these thoughts that he hardly realized that some one had lifted the window curtain cautiously. The beam of light flashed across him, disappearing before he could lift his head to ascertain the cause. Then a voice spoke, and he leaned back to listen.