"And you're the girl I've trusted!" he gasped, as Teola neared him slowly. "Yours is the faith I've envied!--your life the one standard I wish to gain!... God!" he groaned, "you--you--you the mother of that!"
His bitter tones stung her to the quick, whipping her into immediate action. Fire gold-brown and swift as lightning swept into the flashing eyes. Frederick's sister had thrust the child upon her. The secret was dead between them. Tess remembered her oath--remembered her love for the boy, and Teola's cowardice. Her despair gathered as her false position was forced upon her.
She stooped, and grasped the babe in her hands with a passion that tore the meager clothing from its body. She crushed the infant to her as if indeed Teola's words were true. The small dark head fell limply upon her bosom, the thin legs hung straight and bare over the soiled jacket. One little hand clutched her torn sleeve, as if there lived in the infant-brain a fear of harm. Tess, instinct with potent life and rage, wheeled like a tawny tigress furiously upon Frederick and Teola.
"Air it any of yer damn business," she demanded hotly, "if I wants to have a brat?"
She had silenced the student by the condemning words, which seared his soul like molten lead. A dazed terror gathered in his eyes. He smoothed his forehead with trembling fingers. The lightning forked about the squatter and the babe, illuminating the small head and the bony body of the child. Tess felt it shiver and mechanically she lifted her skirt, wrapping him close within it. Her gaze took in sneeringly the shrinking form of Teola, and the arm of the student encircling his sister's waist. For one instant she hated them both with all the strength of her half-savage nature. Still, no thought came of breaking her promise.
"Ye can both go to hell," she ended distinctly.
A fierce cry from Frederick closed her lips, and the anger within her changed to terror. What was she doing? Blasting his love, his faith, his confidence with words that blackened her soul with perfidy and her life with dishonor. Had she not told the student that long-ago night that she loved him?--that she was his squatter for ever and ever? And was she not now at this moment keeping a secret from him for his own sake? Something in her small, ghastly face brought the lad in his boyish agony, impulsively forward.
"For God's love--and mine, Tess--tell me, it isn't true! Tell me you are shielding someone else--"