“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 passion 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 all day, returning only in time to sup in the hollow tree, which, thanks to the final removal of the dead bear from its vicinity, was now considered a safer retreat than the exposed camp-fire.  On the first of these occasions she received him with some preoccupation, paying but little heed to the scant gossip he brought from Indian Spring, and retiring early under the plea of fatigue, that he might seek his own distant camp-fire, which, thanks to her stronger nerves and regained courage, she no longer required so near.  On the second occasion, he found her writing a letter more or less blotted with her tears.  When it was finished, she begged him to post it at Indian Spring, where in two days an answer would be returned, under cover, to him.

“I hope you will be satisfied then,” she added.

“Satisfied with what?” queried the young man.

“You’ll see,” she replied, giving him her cold hand.  “Good-night.”