"You succeed very well," he remarked. "Let Dolly come around to see me when she has had supper. I leave early in the morning, and can't see her then to say good-bye."
"So soon--going?" She tried to keep the delight from her tone of surprise. He was the most unmanageable man she had ever known. His indifference had attracted her, even infatuated her, a year ago, but there were days since when she thought she hated him. "Yes, I will send Dolly. She loves you dearly, more even than she did poor Ted."
"We will not discuss my brother," he said, coldly. "But that will not prevent me caring for the child as he would have done."
"Irrespective of her mother?" she asked, halting in the door and looking over her shoulder at him.
"Or--or of anything I might offend you in?"
"Nothing you choose to do will affect my promise to my brother," he said, impatient at her persistence.
"I may remind you of that some day," she said, gathering up her brocades. "If you do go, I hope that ghoul of a man, your padre, goes too. His silence makes him more like a spook than a man. The people have a holy horror of his piety."
After she had disappeared, Padre Libertad entered from an inner room and smiled grimly at Bryton.
"You are the sort of lover to be unhappy," he observed. "You can't console yourself with the other women. Half the men in the valley are mad over that woman, who would coquette with you if you did not turn ice when she comes near."
Keith stared out of the window toward the hills of the sea, tinged with the warm rose of the sunset. And the man in a priest's robe tried to laugh, and ended with a sigh.
"I admire your strength, though I doubt if I could emulate it," he confessed. "One pretty woman in sight is worth a dozen goddesses over the hill."
"I can. I shall leave to-night instead of to-morrow. I find I can go to Mexico, or South America if I choose, without touching land. I shall be running away with the property of a relative, and you might not care to mix up with it."
"An hour ago I had not confessed Victorio Lopez! I know an old record of his, and he thinks it is witchcraft. There is a lot of coin going along,--a matter of several rawhide sacks of it,--but it will be donated by a man who can afford gifts. Let me have your address two months ahead, and I can tell you how it all turns out."