“Unless—­” repeated Mrs. Tucker, with kindling eyes.

“Unless,” continued Captain Poindexter, “they happen to find you in possession.”

“I’ll go,” said Mrs. Tucker.

“Of course you will,” returned Poindexter, pleasantly; “only, as it’s a big contract to take, suppose we see how you can fill it.  It’s forty miles to Los Cuervos, and you can’t trust yourself to steamboat or stage-coach.  The steamboat left an hour ago.”

“If I had only known this then!” ejaculated Mrs. Tucker.

“I knew it, but you had company then,” said Poindexter, with ironical gallantry, “and I wouldn’t disturb you.”  Without saying how he knew it, he continued, “In the stage-coach you might be recognized.  You must go in a private conveyance and alone; even I can not go with you, for I must go on before and meet you there.  Can you drive forty miles?”

Mrs. Tucker lifted up her abstracted pretty lids.  “I once drove fifty—­at home,” she returned simply.

“Good! and I dare say you did it then for fun.  Do it now for something real and personal, as we lawyers say.  You will have relays and a plan of the road.  It’s rough weather for a pasear, but all the better for that.  You’ll have less company on the road.”

“How soon can I go?” she asked.

“The sooner the better.  I’ve arranged everything for you already,” he continued with a laugh.  “Come now, that’s a compliment to you, isn’t it?” He smiled a moment in her steadfast, earnest face, and then said, more gravely, “You’ll do.  Now listen.”

He then carefully detailed his plan.  There was so little of excitement or mystery in their manner that the servant, who returned to light the gas, never knew that the ruin and bankruptcy of the house was being told before her, or that its mistress was planning her secret flight.

“Good afternoon; I will see you to-morrow then,” said Poindexter, raising his eyes to hers as the servant opened the door for him.

“Good afternoon,” repeated Mrs. Tucker quietly answering his look.  “You need not light the gas in my room, Mary,” she continued in the same tone of voice as the door closed upon him; “I shall lie down for a few moments, and then I may run over to the Robinsons for the evening.”

She regained her room composedly.  The longing desire to bury her head in her pillow and “think out” her position had gone.  She did not apostrophize her fate, she did not weep; few real women do in the access of calamity, or when there is anything else to be done.  She felt that she knew it all; she believed she had sounded the profoundest depths of the disaster, and seemed already so old in her experience that she almost fancied she had been prepared for it.  Perhaps she did not fully appreciate it; to a life like hers it was only an incident, the mere turning of a page of the illimitable book of youth; the breaking up of what she now felt had become a monotony.  In fact, she was not quite sure she