With what a pang of self-contemptuous self-reproach she
recalled his white, anguished face as he rushed into the store to bid
her farewell when the soldiers were coming to take him. If he at
first, by his persecution of her, had left her with a right to complain,
she had given him such a right by that glance. She writhed as she
admitted to herself that by that she had given him a sort of claim on
her.
The village gossip about Perez' infatuation for her, although of her
own weakness none guessed, had naturally come to the ears of the
visitors, and some of the young men at Edwards' good naturedly chaffed
her about it, speaking of it as an amusing joke. She had to bear this
without wincing, and worse still, she had to play the hypocrite so far
as to reply in the same jesting tone, joining in turning the laugh on
the poor, shabby mob captain, when she knew in her heart it ought to
be turned against her.
There was nothing else she could do, of course. She could not confess
to these gay bantering young gentlemen the incredible weakness of
which she had been guilty. But if the self-contempt of the doer can
avenge a wrong done to another, Perez was amply avenged for this. And
the worst of it was that the thought that she had wronged him here
also, and meanly taken advantage of him, added to that horrid sense of
his claim on her.
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