"You know mighty well and good that what I have to say to you is plenty important," Flenton told her, shaken out of his usual half-cringing caution. "Callisty, yo' husband has quit ye; [306] he's down in the Settlement, and is givin' it out to each and every that he's aimin' to sell to the Company and go to Texas." He would have continued, but a glance at her face showed him such white rage that he was startled. "I didn't aim to make you mad," he pleaded. "I know you quit Lance first--good for nothin' as he was, he'd never have given you up, I reckon, till you shook him." Callista set a hand against her bosom as though she forcibly stilled some emotion that forbade speech. Finally she managed to say with tolerable composure, "Flenton Hands, you've named a name to me that I won't hear from anybody's lips if I can help it--least of all from yours. If that's the speech you came to have with me, you better go--you cain't take yourself off too soon." "No," Hands clung to his point, "no, Callisty, that ain't all I come to say. I want to speak for myse'f." He studied her covertly. He did not dare to mention the divorce which he had assured her grandfather he was ready and anxious to secure for her. "I,"--he was breathing short, and he moistened his lips before he could go on--"I just wanted to say to you, Callisty, that thar's them that loves you, and respects and admires you, and thinks the sun rises and sets in you." [307] Lance's wife looked down with bitten lip. Her full glance studied the cooing child playing on the floor near her feet. "Well--and if _that's_ all you came to say, you might have been in better business," she told him coldly. "I reckon I've got a few friends." She chose to ignore the attitude of lover which he had assumed. After a moment's silence Flenton began desperately, "Yo' grandfather named to me that I ought not to visit at the house like I do without my intentions towards and concerning you was made clear," twisting Grandfather Gentry's words to a significance that would certainly have amazed the original speaker. "I told him that I was a honest man and a member in good standin' of Brush Arbor church, and that what I wanted of you was--" He caught the eye of the girl at the loom and broke off. The red was rising in her pale face till she looked like the Callista of old. "Don't you never say it!" she choked. "Don't you come here to me, a wedded wife, doin' for my child, and talk like I was a girl lookin' for a husband. I've got one man. Him and me will settle our affairs without help from you. I may not let you nor nobody else, name him to me--but I'll take no such words as this from your mouth." "An' you won't let me come about any more--you won't speak to me?" demanded Hands, in alarm. [308] "What is it to me where you come or where you stay?" Callista flung back scornfully. "This ain't house of mine---I'm not the one to bid you go or come."