Free A First Family of Tasajara by Bret Harte Page B

more."
    There seemed to be no reasonable excuse for refusing. She slipped quickly into the boat without waiting for his helping hand, avoiding that contact which only a moment ago she was trying to recall.
    Mrs. Ashwood had resumed her conventional courtesy without however losing her feminine desire to make her companion pay for the agitation he had caused her. "We would have been always pleased to see you," she said vaguely, "and I hope, as you are here now, you will come with me to the hotel. My brother"-
    "Don't," he said, looking at her fixedly. "I can see you don't like it."
    "On the contrary," she said promptly, "I think it beautifully written, and very ingenious in plot and situation. Of course it isn't the story I told you-I didn't expect that, for I'm not a genius. The man is not at all like my cousin, you know, and the woman-well really, to tell the truth, SHE is simply inconceivable!"
    "You think so?" he said gravely. He had been gazing abstractedly at some shining brown seaweed in the water, and when he raised his eyes to hers they seemed to have caught its color.
    "But at least let my brother thank you for taking his place-in rescuing me. It was so thoughtful in you to put off at once when you saw I was surrounded. I might have been in great danger."
    "No, I am going back now." There was a sudden firmness about the young fellow which she had never before noticed. This was evidently the creature who had married in spite of his family.
    "I will let you know," she said quickly. "I will write to you as I intended."
    "No, I didn't mean that. I meant that if you found the woman less inconceivable and more human, don't write to me, but put your red lamp in your window instead of the blue one. I will watch for it and see it."
    "Don Diego Fletcher-Fletcher! Is he a Spaniard then?"
    "Half and half, I reckon; he's from the lower country, I believe."
    "Not much; he has mills at Los Gatos, wheat ranches at Santa Clara, and owns a newspaper in 'Frisco! But he's here now. There were lights in his house last night, and his cutter lies off the point."
    This done, however, a slight reaction set in, and having taken off her hat and shawl, she dropped listlessly on a chair by the window, but as suddenly rose and took a seat in the darker part of the room. She felt that she had done right, that highest but most depressing of human convictions! It was entirely for his good. There was no reason why his best interests should suffer for his folly. If anybody was to suffer it was she. But what nonsense was she thinking! She would write to him later when she was a little cooler,-as she had said. But then he had distinctly told her, and very rudely too, that he didn't want her to write. Wanted her to make SIGNALS to him,-the idiot! and probably was even now watching her with a telescope. It was really too preposterous!
    Mrs. Ashwood felt a sudden consternation. Here had she-Jack's sister-just been taking Jack's probable rival into confidential correspondence! She turned upon Jack sharply:-
    "None whatever," said Mrs. Ashwood calmly as she walked out of the room.
    Mrs. Ashwood could not stand the dreadful twilight.
    "Read that," he said, handing the young man a letter.
    "I am afraid you must inquire of her brother, Mr. Shipley," said Harcourt curtly.
    "When you see this Mrs.-Mrs. Ashwood again, you might say"-
    "I shall not see her again," interrupted John Milton hastily.
    The shock he had felt at Mrs. Ashwood's frigid disposition of his wishes and his manuscript had benumbed him to any enjoyment or appreciation of the change in his fortune. He wandered out of the house and descended to the beach in a dazed, bewildered way, seeing only the words of her letter to Fletcher before him, and striving to grasp some other meaning from them than their coldly practical purport. Perhaps this was her cruel revenge for his telling her not to write to him. Could she not have divined it was only his fear of what she might say! And now it was all over! She