But," she added
reluctantly, "I never liked to watch her--no, not lest you should
notice it--but because she did not seem true in her ways with you; and
I should have missed those signs but for a strange warning." ... She
paused.
"_I_ would not be warned," I answered with a bitter sigh. "Tell me,
Madonna."
"It was when you left me in this room alone," she said, her exquisite
delicacy rendering her averse to recal, not the coercion she had
suffered, but the pain she knew I felt in so coercing her. "Dearest,"
she added with a sudden effort, "let me speak frankly, and dispel the
pain you feel while you think over it in silence."
I kissed the hand that clasped my own, and she went on, speaking with
intentional levity.
"Had a Chief forgotten?" tracing the outline of a star upon her bosom.
"Or did you think Clavelta's daughter had no share in the hereditary
gifts of her family?"
"But how did you unlock the springs?"
"Ah! those might have baffled me if you had trusted to them. You made
a double mistake when you left Enva on guard.... You don't think I
tempted her to disobey? Eager as I was for release, I could not have
been so doubly false.
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