In the hall they all came together, and the colonel, who had tripped on one of his flapping slippers and come up angrier than ever, exploded, “You ought to be ashamed, Hilda! That young hound—here on my place—after he’d been as good as ordered off of it—you dressed and ready to run away with him! Oh, you can’t lie out of it, young lady; any fool could see what was up. May—” Hilda saw that Maybelle was halfway down the stairs, a kimono pulled on, one bedroom slipper and one riding boot, which latter nobody but herself seemed to notice—“May, go back and step into this girl’s room; see if she isn’t already packed to leave.” “She—she is, Pa,” Maybelle was almost whimpering. “I’ve just been in there. Everything she’s got is packed up.” Then she was down the stairs in a rush, her arms around Hilda’s neck, whispering, “Don’t. Don’t give me away. Oh—Hilda! It won’t make any difference to you. You don’t want to stay here, anyhow. But—” Hilda pushed her off and turned to Colonel Marchbanks. Of course, Maybelle’s things were packed, too; under that kimono Maybelle was dressed, ready to have gone with that man. “What Maybelle says is true,” she told them all, “I’m going to leave in the morning.” “You’ll leave for Lame Jones County in the morning,” the colonel growled. “Certainly. That’s what I mean,” Hilda agreed. “Fayte, go dress,” said his father; “I want you to ride in to the station and send a telegram to Pearsall. The rest of you get upstairs to bed.” CHAPTER XXX THE RETURN It was strange to Hilda to be going home to Lame Jones County by railroad. Not once before, since that journey from New York that brought the Van Brunts to Texas, had she traveled on a train. The thought flitted vaguely through her mind—why she’d hardly know how to act—what to do. But, once settled in the car, sunk in her own thoughts, she found that the people in the other seats or passing in the aisles were almost like shadows. Even the Marchbankses out there at the ranch, in that queer breakfast at dawn, Mrs. Marchbanks and Maybelle stealing down for it in wrappers, sitting with her under the colonel’s watchful eye, hadn’t been real people. They all swung in a sort of dream. Mrs. Marchbanks’s little signals to her when the man at the end of the table wasn’t looking—that trying to get in a word alone with her before the final good-by. What did it matter? Maybelle’s anxious, apologetic whisper that she’d tried to find out what Pa said in his telegram—guessed it was just a notification to the folks at the Sorrows of Hilda’s unexpected return—got little attention. Fayte wasn’t at the table. Probably he hadn’t come back from Juan Chico.