Mr Jack Hamlins Mediation | Page 5

and light in her huckleberry eyes, and said she was going
over to the cattle- sheds in the "far pasture," to see if the hired man
didn't know of some horse that could be got for the stranger, Mrs.
Rylands felt a little bitterness in the thought that the girl would have
scarcely volunteered to go all that distance in the rain for HER. Yet, in
a few moments she forgot all about it, and even the presence of her
guest in the house, and in one of her fitful abstracted employments
passed through the dining-room into the kitchen, and had opened the
door with an "Oh, Jane!" before she remembered her absence.
The kitchen, lit by a single candle, could be only partly seen by her as
she stood with her hand on the lock, although she herself was plainly
visible. There was a pause, and then a quiet, self- possessed, yet
amused, voice answered:--
"My name isn't Jane, and if you're the lady of the house, I reckon yours
wasn't ALWAYS Rylands."
At the sound of the voice Mrs. Rylands threw the door wide open, and
as her eyes fell upon the speaker--her unknown guest--she recoiled with
a little cry, and a white, startled face. Yet the stranger was young and
handsome, dressed with a scrupulousness and elegance which even the
stress of travel had not deranged, and he was looking at her with a
smile of recognition, mingled with that careless audacity and
self-possession which seemed to be the characteristic of his face.
"Jack Hamlin!" she gasped.
"That's me, all the time," he responded easily, "and YOU'RE Nell
Montgomery!"

"How did you know I was here? Who told you?" she said impetuously.
"Nobody! never was so surprised in my life! When you opened that
door just now you might have knocked me down with a feather." Yet
he spoke lazily, with an amused face, and looked at her without
changing his position.
"But you MUST have known SOMETHING! It was no mere accident,"
she went on vehemently, glancing around the room.
"That's where you slip up, Nell," said Hamlin imperturbably. "It WAS
an accident and a bad one. My horse lamed himself coming down the
grade. I sighted the nearest shanty, where I thought I might get another
horse. It happened to be this." For the first time he changed his attitude,
and leaned back contemplatively in his chair.
She came towards him quickly. "You didn't use to lie, Jack," she said
hesitatingly.
"Couldn't afford it in my business,--and can't now," said Jack cheerfully.
"But," he added curiously, as if recognizing something in his
companion's agitation, and lifting his brown lashes to her, the window,
and the ceiling, "what's all this about? What's your little game here?"
"I'm married," she said, with nervous intensity,--"married, and this is
my husband's house!"
"Not married straight out!--regularly fixed?"
"Yes," she said hurriedly.
"One of the boys? Don't remember any Rylands. SPELTER used to be
very sweet on you,--but Spelter mightn't have been his real name?"
"None of our lot! No one you ever knew; a--a straight out, square man,"
she said quickly.
"I say, Nell, look here! You ought to have shown up your cards without
even a call. You ought to have told him that you danced at the Casino."

"I did."
"Before he asked you to marry him?"
"Before."
Jack got up from his chair, put his hands in his pockets, and looked at
her curiously. This Nell Montgomery, this music-hall "dance and song
girl," this girl of whom so much had been SAID and so little PROVED!
Well, this was becoming interesting.
"You don't understand," she said, with nervous feverishness; "you
remember after that row I had with Jim, that night the manager gave us
a supper,--when he treated me like a dog?"
"He did that," interrupted Jack.
"I felt fit for anything," she said, with a half-hysterical laugh, that
seemed voiced, however, to check some slumbering memory. "I'd have
cut my throat or his, it didn't matter which"--
"It mattered something to us, Nell," put in Jack again, with polite
parenthesis; "don't leave US out in the cold."
"I started from 'Frisco that night on the boat ready to fling myself into
anything--or the river!" she went on hurriedly. "There was a man in the
cabin who noticed me, and began to hang around. I thought he knew
who I was,--had seen me on the posters; and as I didn't feel like foolin',
I told him so. But he wasn't that kind. He said he saw I was in trouble
and wanted me to tell him all."
Mr. Hamlin regarded her cheerfully. "And you told him," he said, "how
you had once run away from your childhood's happy home to go on the
stage! How you always regretted