But I did, and
here I am. I went down there as your husband's sweetheart, I've come
back as the wife of an honest man, and I reckon it's about square!"
There was something so startlingly frank, so hopelessly self-satisfied,
so contagiously good-humored in the woman's perfect moral
unconsciousness, that even if Mrs. Tucker had been less preoccupied her
resentment would have abated. But her eyes were fixed on the gloomy
face of Patterson, who was beginning to unlock the sepulchers of his
memory and disinter his deeply buried thoughts.
"You kin bet your whole pile on what this Mrs. Capting Baxter--ez used
to be French Inez of New Orleans--hez told ye. Ye kin take everything
she's onloaded. And it's only doin' the square thing to her to say, she
hain't done it out o' no cussedness, but just to satisfy herself, now
she's a married woman and past such foolishness. But that ain't neither
here nor there. The gist of the whole matter is that Spencer Tucker was
at the _tienda_ the day after she sailed and after his boat capsized."
He then gave a detailed account of the interview, with the unnecessary
but truthful minutiae of his class, adding to the particulars already
known that the following week he visited the Summit House and was
surprised to find that Spencer had never been there, nor had he ever
sailed from Monterey.
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