THE SEARCH PARTY
it," reasoned the girl, "but it cannot be true—oh, I know it is not true!"
One sentence in the letter frightened her: "I would not have hurt you above all others in the world."
A week ago that sentence would have filled her with delight, now it depressed her.
She wished she had never met Clayton. She was sorry that she had ever seen the forest god—no, she was glad. And there was that other note she had found in the grass before the cabin the day after her return from the jungle, the love note signed by Tarzan of the Apes.
Who could be this new suitor? If he were another of the wild denizens of this terrible forest what might he not do to claim her?
"Esmeralda! Wake up," she cried.
"You make me so irritable, sleeping there peacefully when you know perfectly well that the world is filled with sorrow."
"Gaberelle!" screamed Esmeralda, sitting up. "What am it now? A hipponocerous? Where am he, Miss Jane?"
"Nonsense, Esmeralda, there is nothing. Go back to sleep. You are bad enough asleep, but you are infinitely worse awake."
"Yasm honey, but what's de matter wif you-all precious? You acts sorter kinder disgranulated dis ebenin'."
"Oh, Esmeralda, I'm just plain ugly tonight,"
[309]
