Part 7 (2/2)

Why--why, I'm engaged to Jude Lauzoon. I'm going to marry him right away. We can't even wait for him to build a new shack. If a minister doesn't happen this way, we're going over to Hillcrest. Oh, what a joke we've played on you!”

Jared stared idiotically, and Joyce's laugh rang wildly out.

”Mr. Gaston and me! What an idea! Why, he's helping us”--the inspiration to say this came from a blind belief in Gaston's quick adaptability--”he's helping me and Jude--to what we want.”

”The devil he is!” It was all that Jared could clutch from the rout.

”I--I believe it's a thundering lie,” he added as an after-thought, and as a cover to his retreat.

”It's no lie.” Joyce had regained her calmness. She was panting, but she had reached safety and she knew it. An unlovely, unhallowed safety, but such as it was it was her salvation and Gaston's.

When she had stolen to him the night before it was her last ignorant impulse to gain her own ends. From now on she must be on guard, or her world would come clattering about her heart and soul. It took Jared some minutes to digest the information that had been flung at him so unexpectedly, and then anger and baffled hope swayed him. Joyce married to Jude would make _his_, Jared's, future no securer than it now was.

Indeed it might complicate matters, for Jared had no belief in Jude rising above the dead level of St. Ange standards.

”You're a durn fool!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed at last, while the new impression of his daughter's beauty stirred him painfully. ”You are a durn fool to fling yourself away on Jude when you might have done most anything with yourself--if you was managed right.”

Then in an evil moment Joyce laughed. Her lips parted in an odd little way they had showing the small white teeth and forming the dimples in cheeks and chin. So great was the girl's relief; so appalled was she at what might have been, that the conflict of emotions made her almost hysterical.

”Daddy,” she said, between ripples of laughter, ”you thought you had me then, didn't you? But being your daughter, you know, I had wit enough to take care of myself.”

Jared listened to this outburst in sheer amazement. Unable to understand, in the least, what was pa.s.sing over the girl before him, he weighed her by his own low standard, and drew the worst possible conclusion as Jude had done before him.

He looked steadily at Joyce, and he saw the colour and fire come to cheek and eye. The ringing laughter struck through his brutality and hurt something in him that was akin to paternal love; but so long had that protecting tenderness been ignored by Jared, that now when it was called upon to act, it did so in a savage rage.

”By heaven!” he thundered, ”I catch your drift, you young divil. And if that Myst. ain't a slick one! Going to use Jude is he, to pull his chestnuts out of the fire?”

Then Jared strode forward with arm upraised as if to strike and, by so doing, again command the situation. In like manner had he downed and controlled Joyce's mother. But he paused before the pale undaunted girl.

Her laugh died suddenly, to be sure, so suddenly that the gleaming teeth and pretty dimples outlived the mirth long enough to give a stricken, death-like expression to the face, but the change brought no fear; it brought something worse.

Joyce's moral sense was an unknown quant.i.ty in her present development.

Her father's true meaning affected her not at all; what she felt was--a loathing disgust, and a conviction that if she was to hold even Jude for herself against her father's anger and purpose, she must flee to other shelter.

She drew herself up and cast a look upon Jared that he never forgot to his dying day. It was an added f.a.ggot to that h.e.l.l of his.

”Isa Tate,” the even voice broke upon him, ”Isa Tate said you killed my mother. But I'm not afraid of you, and I'm going to live my life. You can't kill me! I know when and where to go.”

With that she gathered up the work that had fallen to the floor, and almost ran into the little bedchamber beyond the kitchen, closing the door after her.

Jared sat dumbly staring at the wooden barrier. He longed to call her, but his tongue p.r.i.c.ked with excitement.

He dared not go to her--so he waited. He heard her moving about inside the room. A half-hour pa.s.sed, then an hour. Noon came and went. The fire was out, and dinner, apparently, was as distant as it had been two hours before.

Jared fell asleep in his hard chair, his dishevelled head lying on his arms folded on the bare table. When he awoke it was three o'clock and Joyce stood before him.

She was very white, and the drawn look was still in evidence. She wore a blue-and-white checked gown; short and scant it was, but daintily fresh and sweet. She had her poor little best hat on--a hat with a bunch of roses on the side--and she carried a large basket in her hand.

Jared stared at her as if she were part of a nightmarish dream.

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