Then he relapsed into deep thought.  Presently he roused himself from his reverie and prepared for bed.

“But I’ll give him a chance.  Yes, I’ll give him a chance,” he muttered, as, after undergoing the simple operation of removing his coat, he stretched himself upon his bed and drew the blankets about him.  “If he’ll consent to renounce any claim, fancied or otherwise, he may have to Joaquina Allandale’s regard I’ll refrain from selling him up.  Yes, Verner Lablache will forego his money—­for a time.”

The great bed shook as the monumental money-lender suppressed a chuckle.  Then he turned over, and his stertorous inhalations soon suggested that the great man slept.

Shylock, the Jew, determined on having his pound of flesh.  But a woman outwitted him.

CHAPTER X

“Aunt” Margaret reflects

It was almost dark when Jacky returned to the ranch.  She had left “Lord” Bill at the brink of the great keg, whence he had returned to his own place.  Her first thought, on entering the house, was for the letter which she had left for her uncle.  It was gone.  She glanced round the room uncertainly.  Then she stood gazing into the stove, while she idly drummed with her gauntleted fingers upon the back of a chair.  She had as yet removed neither her Stetson hat nor her gauntlets.

Her strong, dark face was unusually varying in its expression.  Possibly her thoughts were thus indexed.  Now, as she stood watching the play of the fire, her great, deep eyes would darken with a grave, almost anxious expression; again they would smile with a world of untold happiness in their depths.  Again they would change, in a flash, to a hard, cold gleam of hatred and unyielding purpose; then slowly, a tender expression, such as that of a mother for Her new-born babe, would creep into them and shine down into the depths of the fire with a world of sweet sympathy.  But through all there was a tight compression of the lips, which spoke of the earnest purpose which governed her thoughts; a slight pucker of the brows, which surely told of a great concentration of mind.

Presently she roused herself, and, walking to where a table-bell stood, rang sharply upon it.  Her summons was almost immediately answered by the entry of a servant.

Jacky turned as the door opened, and fired an abrupt question.

“Has Uncle John been in, Mamie?”

The girl’s face had resumed its usual strong, kindly expression.  Whatever was hidden behind that calm exterior, she had no intention of giving a chance observer any clew to it.

“No, miss,” the servant replied, in that awestruck tone which domestics are apt to use when sharply interrogated.  She was an intelligent-looking girl.  Her dark skin and coarse black hair pronounced her a half-breed.  Her mistress had said “blood is thicker than water.”  All the domestics under Jacky’s charge hailed from the half-breed camp.