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Updated: June 7, 2025
The injured mother was taken to the hospital. When she recovered, she learned that Mrs. Rutlidge was dead a suicide. Later, Mr. Rutlidge took the baby to raise as his ward; telling the world that the child was the daughter of a relative who had died at its birth.
The artist's exclamation drew a sarcastic chuckle from the other. "I am prepared, now, to testify to your unworldly innocence of heart and mind," he gibed. "And, pray, why not his wife? You see, she was the ward of old Rutlidge a niece, it is said. Mrs. Rutlidge as you have no doubt heard killed herself. It was shortly after her death that Jim took this little one into his home.
At the other end of the ledge, James Rutlidge set his rifle behind the rock. Deliberately, the two men removed their coats and threw aside their hats. For a moment they stood eyeing each other. Into Aaron King's mind flashed the memory of that scene at the Fairlands depot, when, moved by the distress of the woman with the disfigured face, he had first spoken to the man who faced him now.
If she had fired a gun, James Rutlidge could not have turned with a more startled suddenness. "What in thunder do you want there?" he demanded shortly. "I want to stop," she returned calmly. "But I must get down town, at once," he protested. "I have already lost the best part of the afternoon." "Your business seems to have become important very suddenly," she observed, sarcastically.
"Don't worry madam he's just as much a fool as the rest of us." As the novelist spoke, they heard the voices of Miss Taine and her escort, James Rutlidge. Mrs. Taine had only time to shake a finger in playful warning at her companion, and to whisper, "Mind you bring your artist to me, or I'll get him when you're not looking; and listen, don't tell Jim about him; I must see what he is like, first."
The novelist, as he turned toward the speaker, shot a quick glance at the Artist. Nor did those keen, baffling eyes fail to note that, at the question, James Rutlidge had paused in the middle of a sentence. "That is one of the mysteries of our romantic surroundings madam," said Conrad Lagrange, easily. "And a very charming mystery it seems to be," returned the woman.
James Rutlidge, by the intellectual, moral, and physical atmosphere in which he lived, was made wholly incapable of understanding the nature of Sibyl Andrés. Secure in the convictions of his own debased mind, as to her relation to the artist; and misconstruing her very manner in his presence; he was not long in putting his proposal into words that she could not fail to understand.
"But tell me, did no one disturb you while you were in the studio?" Her cheeks colored painfully, and all the laughter was gone from her voice as she replied, "I didn't want you to know that part." "But I must know," he insisted gravely. "Yes," she said, "Mr. Rutlidge found me there; and I ran away through the garden. I don't like him. He frightens me.
Fixing his peculiar eyes upon the visitor, he asked abruptly, with polite but purposeful interest, after the health of Mr. and Mrs. Taine and Louise. The faint shadow of a suggestive smile that crossed the heavy features of James Rutlidge, as he turned his gaze from the gloves to meet the look of the novelist was maddening. "The old boy is steadily going down," he said without feeling.
Finding no one at home, he had started a fire, and had helped himself to coffee and bacon. He was just concluding his appropriated meal, when Sibyl and James Rutlidge arrived. In a few words, the girl explained to her friend, that she was on her way over the trail from Lone Cabin, and had accidentally met Mr. Rutlidge who had accompanied her as far as the camp.
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