"Oh yes, I know you did, Langdon Chester, and you took her shawl for the same reason and made the poor, helpless, scared thing agree to wait for you. A good scamp pleases me powerful, but you are too good a sample for any use. Get the shawl." "I don’t want to be misunderstood," Chester said, in an all but conciliatory tone, as he took a slow, upward step. "Well, you bet there’s no danger of me not understanding you," Ann sneered. "Get that shawl." Without another word he groped up the dark steps. Ann heard him walking about on the floor above, striking matches and uttering exclamations of anger. Presently she heard him coming. When half-way down the stairs he paused and threw the shawl to her. "There it is," he said, sullenly. "Leave my revolver on the steps." Ann caught the shawl, which, like some winged thing, swooped down through the darkness, and the next instant she had lowered the hammer of the revolver and laid it on the lowest step of the stairs. "All right, it’s an even swap," she chuckled—"your gun for our shawl. Now go to your bed and sleep on this. It’s my opinion that, bad as you are, young man, I’ve done you a favor to-night." "There’s one thing I’ll try to find out," he summoned up retaliatory courage to say, "and that is why you are bothering yourself so much about the daughter of a woman you are doing all you can to injure." Ann laughed from the door as she crossed the threshold, the shawl under her arm. "It will do you good to study on that problem," she said. "You find that out, and I’ll pay you well for the answer. I don’t know that myself." From the window of his room above, Langdon watched her as she passed through the gate and disappeared on the lonely road. "She won’t tell it," he decided. "She’ll keep quiet, unless it is her plan to hold it over Jane Hemingway. That may be it—and yet if that is so, why didn’t she—wait?" XXIII The sun had just risen the next morning, and its long, red streamers were kindling iridescent fires in the jewels of dew on the dying grass of the fields. White mists, like tenderly caressing clouds, hung along the rocky sides of the mountains. Ann Boyd, her eyes heavy from unwonted loss of sleep, was at the barn feeding her horses when she saw Virginia coming across the meadows. "She wants her shawl, poor thing!" Ann mused. "I’ll go get it." She went back into the house and brought it out just as the beautiful girl reached the barn-yard fence and stood there wordless, timid, and staring. "You see, I kept my word," the elder woman said, with an effort at a smile. "Here is your shawl." Virginia reached out for it. She said nothing, simply folding the shawl on her arm and staring into Ann’s eyes with a woe-begone expression. She had lost her usual color, and there were black rings round her wonderful eyes that gave them more depth and seeming mystery than ever. "I hope your mother wasn’t awake last night when you got back," Ann said.