"Robbed your home!" interjected Orlando quietly, but with a voice of
suppressed passion. "Robbed your home! Why, the other day you tried
to prevent her entering it. You wanted to shut her out. After she had
lived with you all those years, you believed she lied to you when she
told you the truth about that night on the prairie; but her innocence was
proved by one who was there all the time, and for shame's sake you had to
let her in. But she couldn't stand it. I don't wonder. A lark wouldn't
be at home where a vulture roosted."

"And so the lark flies away to the cuckoo," snarled the old man, with
flecks of froth gathering at the corners of his mouth; for the sight of
this handsome, long-limbed youth enraged him.

"Give her back to me. You know where she is," he persisted. "You've got
her hid away. That's why you've sent your mother East--so's she wouldn't
know, though from what I see, I shouldn't think it'd have made much
difference to her."

Exclamations broke from the crowd. It was the wild West. It was a
country where, not twenty years before, men did justice upon men without
the assistance of the law; and the West understood that the dark insult
just uttered would in days not far gone have meant death. The onlookers
exclaimed, and then became silent, because a subtle sense of tragedy
suddenly smothered their voices. Upon the silence there broke a little
giggling laugh. It came from lips that were one in paleness with a face
grown stony.

"I ought to kill you," Orlando said quietly after a moment, yet scarcely
above a whisper. "I ought to kill you, Mazarine, but that would only be