tongue wagged on in a
diatribe of accusation and pity.

Lola let the sewing fall. Against her stoutest effort there prevailed a
vivid remembrance of Jane's manner and statements, of Jane's
self-impeachment and agitation, and, try as hard as she could to
forget them, the words which Jane had used kept coming to mind. "I have
done wrong!" Had not Jane said this? Had she not covered her
face--could it be _guiltily_--and gone away?

"No," said Lola, hoarsely, half to herself, half to her hearer, "it
isn't true! You make mistakes, Senora Vigil! Do you hear? You make
mistakes!"

"Alas, for thy soft heart!" moaned the senora. "Thou art changed much!
Me, I would not be hard on Mees Combs, though her sin is clear. Who am
I to judge? Nay, even I try to forget that me she has also despoiled;
that she took a corner of our back yard, and plants corn in it to this
day! I am all for forgiving. But the saints are not so easy!" said the
senora, unconscious of any disparagement to the saints, and referring
merely to a judicial quality in them.

Lola was not listening. She had a burning wish to escape from the soft
buzzing of the senora's words, which, a velvety, sting-infested swarm,
whirred around her bee-like, seeking hive and home.

"Don't think I believe anything against _tia_!" she heard herself
saying sternly, as the gate slipped from her impetuous hand and she
rushed away, the quarry of emotions which no speed, however swift,
could outdistance.

BEWILDERING SATISFACTION

CHAPTER SIX

BEWILDERING SATISFACTION

Lola found herself walking up the canyon, between the rocky hills beside
the dry _arroyo_. Summer dust whitened the road, and rose to her tread
in alkaline clouds. It was warm, too, under the remorseless Colorado
sun, but nothing touched Lola. She was struggling with a thing that was
half anguish and half anger, and that lifted upon her a face more and
more convincing in its ugliness.

It seemed impossible to doubt that Jane had indeed worked the wrong of
which Senora Vigil accused her--although Jane's own word, and no word
of the senora's, bore this conviction to Lola's breast. Jane had
faltered in the trust which she had assumed, and now, confronted with
the embarrassment of facing Lola's father in a plain confession of her
delinquency, she hesitated and was miserable and afraid and reluctant.
Rather than state her situation she would even keep Lola from school.

"It isn't that I care for that!