g impulsively. "No, Captain Carroll--it is NOT
all! And you shall know all, if only to prove to you how we confide in
you--and to leave you free, after you have heard it, to do as you
please." She stood before him, quite white, opening and shutting her
fan quickly, and tapping the tiled floor with her little foot. "I have
told you Dr. West was my mother's business adviser. She looked upon
him as more--as a friend. Do you know what a dangerous thing it is for
a woman who has lost one protector to begin to rely upon another?
Well, my mother is not yet old. Dr. West appreciated her--Dr. West did
not depreciate himself--two things that go far with a woman, Captain
Carroll, and my mother is a woman." She paused, and then, with a light
toss of her fan, said: "Well, to make an end, but for this excellent
horse and this too ambitious rider, one knows not how far the old story
of my mother's first choice would have been repeated, and the curse of
Koorotora again fallen on the land."

"And you tell me this--you, Maruja--you who warned me against my
hopeless passion for you?"

"Could I foresee this?" she said, passionately; "and are you mad enough
not to see that this very act would have made YOUR suit intolerable to
my relations?"

"Then you did think of my suit, Maruja," he said, grasping her hand.

"Or any one's suit," she continued, hurriedly, turning away with a
slight increase of color in her cheeks. After a moment's pause, she
added, in a gentler and half-reproachful voice, "Do you think I have
confided my mother's story to you for this purpose only? Is this the
help you proffer?"

"Forgive me, Maruja," said the young officer, earnestly. "I am
selfish, I know--for I love you. But you have not told me yet how I
could help your mother by delivering this letter, which any one could
do."

"Let me finish then," said Maruja. "It is for you to judge what may be
done. Letters have passed between my mother and Dr. West. My mother is
imprudent; I know not what she may have written, or what she might not
write, in confidence. But you understand, they are not letters to be
made public nor to pass into any hands but hers. They are not to be
left to be bandied about by his American friends; to be commented upon
by strangers; to reach the ears of the Guitierrez. They belong to that
grave which lies between the Past and my mother; they must not rise
from it to haunt her."

"I understand," said the young officer, qu