She saw Lillian Gueste's hand in it. Blanche did not reason; she only felt, and hated the subtle and delicate treason. Did Lillian Gueste suppose, she asked herself, that because a woman wore large hats and loud gloves she had no right to the man she loved?
She rode along the cliff edge at a foot pace, her eyes abstractedly on the dancing shadows of eucalyptus leaves the sun painted in the dust. She wondered was this the close of what had been opening out before her as her life? She thought, with her primitive reasoning, were Lillian only out of the way--her mind did not get further than that. But Blanche had felt from the first that Lillian Gueste had come to Santa Barbara for no other reason than rescuing her brother, and that she did not intend to go until she took Wallie with her. "Could she do that?" Blanche wondered in a panic. Had an opportunity offered, she would have pushed Lillian Gueste out of her way as she would have thrust a pebble from her path.
The sun, falling low in the western sky, made towers of tree shadows, and spread an iridescence over the in creeping fog, as she followed the descending road downward toward the arroya, where a bridle path slipped seaward under willows. She had taken that path often before. It met the beach below what was the usual limit for riders, but she loved the long, exciting gallop, the scramble among the rocks, the spice of danger at the narrow turns about the two points when the tide was coming in.
The salt smell of the sea met her, strong with reek of kelp, as she approached its thunder through the willows. The range of sea and sky, the free wind blowing between, gave her release from thought and scope to act. The tide was running in high and full. Where the first bold bluff jutted out, a distance of some six yards, the sliding foam already lapped the rock. Once around the turn of the bluff, the beach lay before her--a long white, empty sweep under black cliffs.
She rode at an easy canter, breathing in the stinging salt air, looking out upon the water, where the dark "seaward line" swung with the swell a mile out in "the channel." She had lost the choking tears, the despair of her first rush down the Monticito road. She felt not happy, but wildly at liberty. The wind took her hat, and she laughed, seeing it spin down the beach. The tingling breeze in her hair whipped out the short, springy curls. The high animal spirits that had helped her over situations where a less vital woman would have been overwhelmed had begun to reassert themselves in the exercise and open air. She scanned the empty beach perspective. What a gallop to the far point! She touched the mare, then pulled her up sharply in the first bound. The beach was not empty. Some one was riding--perhaps a quarter of a mile in front of her--imperfectly to be distinguished among the scattered rocks.