第45章

"She only knows that the name she has taken she has no right to.""Right to? Why, it was written on the Trust--Yerba Buena.""No, not that. She thought it was a mistake. She took the name of Arguello.""What?" said Mrs. Argalls, suddenly grasping the invalid's wrist with both hands. "What name?" her eyes were startled from their rigid coldness, her lips were colorless.

"Arguello! It was some foolish schoolgirl fancy which that hound helped to foster in her. Why--what's the matter, Kate?"The woman dropped the helpless man's wrist, then, with an effort, recovered herself sufficiently to rise, and, with an air of increased decorum, as if the spiritual character of their interview excluded worldly intrusion, adjusted the screen around his bed, so as partly to hide her own face and Pendleton's. Then, dropping into the chair beside him, she said, in her old voice, from which the burden of ten long years seemed to have been lifted,--"Harry, what's that you're playing on me?""I don't understand you," said Pendleton amazedly.

"Do you mean to say you don't know it, and didn't tell her yourself?" she said curtly.

"What? Tell her what?" he repeated impatiently.

"That Arguello WAS her father!"

"Her father?" He tried to struggle to his elbow again, but she laid her hand masterfully upon his shoulder and forced him back.

"Her father!" he repeated hurriedly. "Jose Arguello! Great God!--are you sure?"

Quietly and yet mechanically gathering the scattered tracts from the coverlet, and putting them back, one by one in her reticule, she closed it and her lips with a snap as she uttered--"Yes."Pendleton remained staring at her silently, "Yes," he muttered, "it may have been some instinct of the child's, or some diabolical fancy of Briones'. But," he said bitterly, "true or not, she has no right to his name.""And I say she HAS."

She had risen to her feet, with her arms folded across her breast, in an attitude of such Puritan composure that the distant spectators might have thought she was delivering an exordium to the prostrate man.

"I met Jose Arguello, for the second time, in New Orleans," she said slowly, "eight years ago. He was still rich, but ruined in health by dissipation. I was tired of my way of life. He proposed that I should marry him to take care of him and legitimatize our child. I was forced to tell him what I had done with her, and that the Trust could not be disturbed until she was of age and her own mistress. He assented. We married, but he died within a year. He died, leaving with me his acknowledgment of her as his child, and the right to claim her if I chose.""And?"--interrupted the colonel with sparkling eyes.

"I DON'T CHOOSE.

"Hear me!" she continued firmly. "With his name and my own mistress, and the girl, as I believed, properly provided for and ignorant of my existence, I saw no necessity for reopening the past. I resolved to lead a new life as his widow. I came north.

In the little New England town where I first stopped, the country people contracted my name to Mrs. Argalls. I let it stand so. Icame to New York and entered the service of the Lord and the bonds of the Church, Henry Pendleton, as Mrs. Argalls, and have remained so ever since.""But you would not object to Yerba knowing that you lived, and rightly bore her father's name?" said Pendleton eagerly.

The woman looked at him with compressed lips. "I should. I have buried all my past, and all its consequences. Let me not seek to reopen it or recall them.""But if you knew that she was as proud as yourself, and that this very uncertainty as to her name and parentage, although she has never known the whole truth, kept her from taking the name and becoming the wife of a man whom she loves?""Whom she loves!"

"Yes; one of her guardians---Hathaway--to whom you intrusted her when she was a child.""Paul Hathaway--but HE knew it."

"Yes. But SHE does not know he does. He has kept the secret faithfully, even when she refused him."She was silent for a moment, and then said,--"So be it. I consent."

"And you'll write to her?" said the colonel eagerly.

"No. But YOU may, and if you want them I will furnish you with such proofs as you may require.""Thank you." He held out his hand with such a happy yet childish gratitude upon his worn face that her own trembled slightly as she took it. "Good-by!""I shall see you soon," she said.

"I shall be here," he said grimly.

"I think not," she returned, with the first relaxation of her smileless face, and moved away.

As she passed out she asked to see the house surgeon. How soon did he think the patient she had been conversing with could be removed from the hospital with safety? Did Mrs. Argalls mean "far?" Mrs.

Argalls meant as far as THAT--tendering her card and eminently respectable address. Ah!--perhaps in a week. Not before? Perhaps before, unless complications ensued; the patient had been much run down physically, though, as Mrs. Argalls had probably noticed, he was singularly strong in nervous will force. Mrs. Argalls HADnoticed it, and considered it an extraordinary case of conviction--worthy of the closest watching and care. When he was able to be moved she would send her own carriage and her own physician to superintend his transfer. In the mean time he was to want for nothing. Certainly, he had given very little trouble, and, in fact, wanted very little. Just now he had only asked for paper, pens, and ink.

CHAPTER VIII.

As Mrs. Argalls's carriage rolled into Fifth Avenue, it for a moment narrowly grazed another carriage, loaded with luggage, driving up to a hotel. The abstracted traveler within it was Paul Hathaway, who had returned from Europe that morning.