Hearts of Three

She hid her face in her hands, although the pink of flush burned furiously in her ears. Yet he could have sworn, unless it were hysteria, that she was laughing; and he knew for the first time how really hard was the task he had undertaken to put the ring of another man on her finger. So he deliberately hardened his heart against the beauty and fascination of her, and said bitterly:

“And now, I suppose some of your gentry will shoot me full of holes because I don’t know a labarri from a viperine. You might call some of the farm hands down to do it. Or maybe you’d like to take a shot at me yourself.”

But she seemed not to have heard, for she had arisen with the quick litheness to be expected of so gloriously fashioned a creature, and was stamping her foot on the sand.

“It’s asleep – my foot,” she explained with laughter unhidden this time by her hands.

“You’re acting perfectly disgracefully,” he assured her wickedly, “when you consider that I am the murderer of your uncle.”

Thus reminded, the laughter ceased and the color receded from her face. She made no reply, but bending, with fingers that trembled with anger she strove to unknot the handkerchief as if it were some loathsome thing.

“Better let me help,” he suggested pleasantly.

“You beast!” she flamed at him. “Step aside. Your shadow falls upon me.”

“Now you are delicious, charming,” he girded, belying the desire that stirred compellingly within him to clasp her in his arms. “You quite revive my last recollection of you here on the beach, one second reproaching me for not kissing you, the next second kissing me – yes, you did, too – and the third second threatening to destroy my digestion forever with that little tin toy pistol of yours. No; you haven’t changed an iota from last time. You’re the same spitfire of a Leoncia. You’d better let me untie that for you. Don’t you see the knot is jammed? Your little fingers can never manage it.”

She stamped her foot in sheer inarticulateness of rage.

“Lucky for me you don’t make a practice of taking your tin toy pistol in swimming with you,” he teased on, “or else there’d be a funeral right here on the beach pretty pronto of a perfectly nice young man whose intentions are never less than the best.”

The Indian boy returned at this moment running with her bathing wrap, which she snatched from him and put on hastily. Next, with the boy’s help, she attacked the knot again. When the handkerchief came off she flung it from her as if in truth it were a viperine.

“It was contamination,” she flashed, for his benefit.

But Francis, still engaged in hardening his heart against her, shook his head slowly and said:

“It doesn’t save you, Leoncia. I’ve left my mark on you that never will come off.”

He pointed to the excoriations he had made on her knee and laughed.

“The mark of the beast,” she came back, turning to go. “I warn you to take yourself off, Mr. Henry Morgan.”

But he stepped in her way.

“And now we’ll talk business, Miss Solano,” he said in changed tones. “And you will listen. Let your eyes flash all they please, but don’t interrupt me.” He stooped and picked up the note he had been engaged in writing. “I was just sending that to you by the boy when you screamed. Take it. Read it. It won’t bite you. It isn’t a viperine.”

Though she refused to receive it, her eyes involuntarily scanned the opening line:

I am the man whom you mistook for Henry Morgan…

She looked at him with startled eyes that could not comprehend much but which were guessing many vague things.

“On my honor,” he said gravely.

“You … are … not … Henry?” she gasped.

“No, I am not. Won’t you please take it and read.”

This time she complied, while he gazed with all his eyes upon the golden pallor of the sun on her tropic-touched blonde face which colored the blood beneath, or which was touched by the blood beneath, to the amazingly beautiful golden pallor.

Almost in a dream he discovered himself looking into her startled, questioning eyes of velvet brown.

“And who should have signed this?” she repeated.

He came to himself and bowed.

“But the name? – your name?”

“Morgan, Francis Morgan. As I explained there, Henry and I are some sort of distant relatives – forty-fifth cousins, or something like that.”

To his bewilderment, a great doubt suddenly dawned in her eyes, and the old familiar anger flashed.

“Henry,” she accused him. “This is a ruse, a devil’s trick you’re trying to play on me. Of course you are Henry.”

Francis pointed to his mustache.

“You’ve grown that since,” she challenged.

He pulled up his sleeve and showed her his left arm from wrist to elbow. But she only looked her incomprehension of the meaning of his action.

“Do you remember the scar?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Then find it.”

She bent her head in swift vain search, then shook it slowly as she faltered:

“I … I ask your forgiveness. I was terribly mistaken, and when I think of the way I … I’ve treated you …”

“That kiss was delightful,” he naughtily disclaimed.

She recollected more immediate passages, glanced down at her knee and stifled what he adjudged was a most adorable giggle.

“You say you have a message from Henry,” she changed the subject abruptly. “And that he is innocent…? This is true? Oh, I do want to believe you!”

“I am morally certain that Henry no more killed your uncle than did I – ”

“Then say no more, at least not now,” she interrupted joyfully. “First of all I must make amends to you, though you must confess that some of the things you have done and said were abominable. You had no right to kiss me.”

“If you will remember,” he contended, “I did it at the pistol point. How was I to know but what I would get shot if I didn’t.”

“Oh, hush, hush,” she begged. “You must go with me now to the house. And you can tell me about Henry on the way.”

Her eyes chanced upon the handkerchief she had flung so contemptuously aside. She ran to it and picked it up.

“Poor, ill-treated kerchief,” she crooned to it. “To you also must I make amends. I shall myself launder you, and…” Her eyes lifted to Francis as she addressed him. “And return it to you, sir, fresh and sweet and all wrapped around my heart of gratitude…”