“Mr. Poindexter!” said Mrs. Tucker quickly, her face becoming pale again.

“I beg your pardon!” said Poindexter, flushing; “but—­”

“You want to say,” she interrupted coolly, “that you are not friends, I see.  Is that the reason why you have avoided this house?” she continued gently.

“I thought I could be of more service to you elsewhere,” he replied evasively.  “I have been lately following up a certain clue rather closely.  I think I am on the track of a confidante of—­of—­that woman.”

A quick shadow passed over Mrs. Tucker’s face.  “Indeed!” she said coldly.  “Then I am to believe that you prefer to spend your leisure moments in looking after that creature to calling here?”

Poindexter was stupefied.  Was this the woman who only four months ago was almost vindictively eager to pursue her husband’s paramour!  There could be but one answer to it—­Don Jose!  Four months ago he would have smiled compassionately at it from his cynical pre-eminence.  Now he managed with difficulty to stifle the bitterness of his reply.

“If you do not wish the inquiry carried on,” he began, “of course—­”

“I?  What does it matter to me?” she said coolly.  “Do as you please.”

Nevertheless, half an hour later, as he was leaving, she said, with a certain hesitating timidity, “Do not leave me so much alone here, and let that woman go.”

This was not the only unlooked-for sequel to her innocent desire to propitiate her best friends.  Don Jose did not call again upon his usual day, but in his place came Dona Clara, his younger sister.  When Mrs. Tucker had politely asked after the absent Don Jose, Dona Clara wound her swarthy arms around the fair American’s waist and replied, “But why did you send for the abogado Poindexter when my brother called?”

“But Captain Poindexter calls as one of my friends,” said the amazed Mrs. Tucker.  “He is a gentleman, and has been a soldier and an officer,” she added with some warmth.

“Ah, yes, a soldier of the law, what you call an oficial de policia, a chief of gendarmes, my sister, but not a gentleman—­a camarero to protect a lady.”

Mrs. Tucker would have uttered a hasty reply, but the perfect and good-natured simplicity of Dona Clara withheld her.  Nevertheless, she treated Don Jose with a certain reserve at their next meeting, until it brought the simple-minded Castilian so dangerously near the point of demanding an explanation which implied too much that she was obliged to restore him temporarily to his old footing.  Meantime she had a brilliant idea.  She would write to Calhoun Weaver, whom she had avoided since that memorable day.  She would say she wished to consult him.  He would come to Los Cuervos; he might suggest something to lighten this weary waiting; at least she would show them all that she had still old friends.  Yet she did not dream of returning to her Blue Grass home; her parents had died since she left; she shrank from the thought of dragging her ruined life before the hopeful youth of her girlhood’s companions.