Her face was quite pale as she removed her hands from her eyes, and her
breath came as quickly as if she had just finished that race for life.
"Then you think I am safe here?" she added, after a pause.
"Perfectly--until they find you are NOT in Yolo. Then they'll look here.
And THAT'S the time for you to go THERE." Teresa smiled timidly.
"It will take them some time to search Yolo--unless," she added, "you're
tired of me here." The charming non sequitur did not, however, seem to
strike the young man. "I've got time yet to find a few more plants for
you," she suggested.
"Oh, certainly!"
"And give you a few more lessons in cooking."
"Perhaps."
The conscientious and literal Low was beginning to doubt if she were
really practical. How otherwise could she trifle with such a situation?
It must be confessed that that day and the next she did trifle with it.
She gave herself up to a grave and delicious languor that seemed to flow
from shadow and silence and permeate her entire being. She passed hours
in a thoughtful repose of mind and spirit that seemed to fall like balm
from those steadfast guardians, and distill their gentle ether in her
soul; or breathed into her listening ear immunity from the forgotten
past, and security for the present. If there was no dream of the future
in this calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much the better.
The simple details of each succeeding day, the quaint housekeeping, the
brief companionship and coming and going of her young host--himself
at best a crystallized personification of the sedate and hospitable
woods--satisfied her feeble cravings. She no longer regretted the
inferior position that her fears had obliged her to take the first night
she came; she began to look up to this young man--so much younger than
herself--without knowing what it meant; it was not until she found
that this attitude did not detract from his picturesqueness that
she discovered herself seeking for reasons to degrade him from this
seductive eminence.
A week had elapsed with little change. On two days he had been absent
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