During the days which followed, Kirk suffered more than he chose
to confess even to his attorney. In the first place, it was hard
to be denied all knowledge of what was going on--Anson would tell
him little, except that he was working every day--and, then, too,
the long hours of solitude gnawed at his self-control. Runnels
managed to see him once or twice, reporting that, so far as he
could learn, Chiquita had disappeared. He took a message from Kirk
to her, but brought back word that he could not deliver it. Kirk
wondered if she could really believe those frightful half-complete
newspaper accounts, or if she had been unable to withstand the
combined weight of her whole family, and had given up. It was
almost too much to hope that a girl reared as she had been could
keep her mind unpoisoned, with all those lying tongues about her.
And, besides, she had the Spanish ideas of morality, which would
make the actions of which he was accused seem doubly shocking. The
more he speculated upon the cause of her silence, the wilder grew
his fancies, until it became a positive torture to think of her at
all. Instead, his thoughts turned to Edith Cortlandt in a
curiously uninterested way. Her attitude was a problem. Perhaps
she would leave him to his fate.
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