"I don't remember to have had the pleasure of seeing you in Calaveras
before," said the editor tentatively.
"No. I never was here before," she said composedly, "but you've heard
enough of me, I reckon. I'm Mrs. Dimmidge." She threw one hand over
the back of the chair, and with the other tapped her riding-whip on the
floor.
The editor started. Mrs. Dimmidge! Then she was not a myth. An absurd
similarity between her attitude with the whip and her husband's entrance
with his gun six weeks before forced itself upon him and made her an
invincible presence.
"Then you have returned to your husband?" he said hesitatingly.
"Not much!" she returned, with a slight curl of her lip.
"But you read his advertisement?"
"I saw that column of fool nonsense he put in your paper--ef that's
what you mean," she said with decision, "but I didn't come here to see
HIM--but YOU."
The editor looked at her with a forced smile, but a vague misgiving. He
was alone at night in a deserted part of the settlement, with a plump,
self-possessed woman who had a contralto voice, a horsewhip, and--he
could not help feeling--an evident grievance.
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