The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1898-03-13

Robb's terrier had chewed her best
brush. SO painting was declared off,
and she went back to her bedroom,
thence to Robb's dressing to see
what could be done there.
The walls of most Mexican hacienda
houses are built of adobe. Adobe often
cracks, and showers of dust come pour
ing down, running your best clothes, if
you have been so foolish as to hang
them up on the wall This is what care
less Robb had done three days before.
AS a consequence, all of his clothes,
even to the unused dress suit, had red
dish dusty streets over them. Mrs.
RObb groaned and then took them all
down from the hooks, carrying arm
fuls of trousers and coats out to the
side Yeranda, where Juan would brush
them afterward. AS for the wall the
hacienda carpenter promised to come
in later in the afternoon and fix it up,
to last until the adobe again cracked.
Some time later, Mrs. Robb decided
that she would fill in the few hours un-
til her husband returned-surely he
would be soon back-with home letters.
Accordingly, she shut out the glazing
light from her own bedroom. and set
tied down with desk and lately receiv-
ed letters, to write her sister at school
in France and the other one now with
a gay party in the Blue Ridge Noun
tainS.
One can't think or compose we'll dur
ing the hot weather in the Mexican
! tropical country. Hence it was that
Mrs. RObb soon found herself dreaming
| about those same Blue Ridge Noun
tains, where she first met and loved
Robb. They were living in the pretty
| little summer cottage, which her fam
lily, the Ravenels, owned there. Robb
was, as he said. having his last fling"
before burying himself in the Mexican
wilds. He did not say that his fam
lily were sending him there for the pur-
pose of getting rid of him and the good
sized debts which he would contract
for their ultimate payment. Which was,
nevertheless, the truth. Not that it
would have made any difference to
Dorothy RaveneI; had he been beg
gar or jail bird, she would have low
ed him the same. Sometimes you meet
an intense woman like that; she will
persist in loving a man, no matter
whether he beats her. or sWears at her,
or drags her through unSpeakable
shame. Dorothy could not hep it all
perhaps 1T was her nature to-
There had been other men. of course,
for Dorothy Ravenel, with her charm
ing ways and chic. half-French beauty,
was admired everywhere. And every
one wondered at her marrying Ernest
Robb, who had no money to speak of,
or brains-merely a good-lOoking rather
rowdy fellow. But Dorothy didn't care
for the opinion of others: she loved
Robb and she proposed to marry him,
whether her guardians withheld their
consent and her goodly little fortune or
not.
She wasn't sorry, as she thought over
il ALL alone in the Mexican hacienda
Ernest had his faults, of course, but it
made no difference. For the man you
love you can make many excuses. And
Ernest loved her-she was sure of that.
She sprang up. and gathered together
her heavy hair, as light tap sounded
at the door. 1t was Juan, with a tiny
folded scrap of paper in his hand.
Something that the senior perhaps
dropped" he explained. 1T was lying
in the patio; perhaps it was of impor-
, lance to the senor.'
Not knowing what it was, Mrs. Robb
unfOlded the paper. as Juan shut the
door and went back to his work. Not
out Of curiosity-the opening and read
ing of her husbands letters was an un-
; known thing TO Dorothy Robb. She did
not even know that it was letter of
her husbands; more probably it was a
memorandum about the coffee trees, or
the peon laborers.
Two hours later, Mrs. Ro5b still sat
motionless on the same lounge, with the
same scrap of paper tightly crumpled
able to understand. The note was in