State three years
ago." Her face flushed and whitened again; she put up her hand blindly
to her straying hair, and for an instant seemed to sway in the saddle.

But Blair as quickly leaped from his horse, and was beside her. "Let
me help you down," he said quickly, "and rest yourself until you are
better." Before she could reply, he lifted her tenderly to the ground
and placed her on a mossy stump a little distance from the trail. Her
color and a faint smile returned to her troubled face.

"Had we not better go on?" she said, looking around. "I never went so
far as to sit down in the woods with HIM that day."

"Forgive me," he said pleadingly, "but, of course, I knew nothing. I
disliked the man from instinct--I thought he had some power over you."

"He has none--except the secret that would also have exposed himself."

"But others knew it. Colonel Starbottle must have known his name? And
yet"--as he remembered he stammered--"he refused to tell me."

"Yes, but not because he knew he was my husband, but because he knew he
bore the same name. He thinks, as every one does, that my husband died
in San Francisco. The man who died there was my husband's cousin--a
desperate man and a noted duelist."

"And YOU assumed to be HIS widow?" said the astounded Blair.

"Yes, but don't blame me too much," she said pathetically. "It was a
wild, a silly deceit, but it was partly forced upon me. For when I
first arrived across the plains, at the frontier, I was still bearing
my husband's name, and although I was alone and helpless, I found myself
strangely welcomed and respected by those rude frontiersmen. It was not
long before I saw it was because I was presumed to be the widow of ALLEN
MacGlowrie--who had just died in San Francisco. I let them think so, for
I knew--what they did not--that Allen's wife had separated from him and
married again, and that my taking his name could do no harm. I accepted
their kindness; they gave me my first start in business, which brought
me here. It was not much of a deceit," she continued, with a slight
tremble of her pretty lip, "to prefer to pass as the widow of a dead
desperado than to be known as the divorced wife of a living convict. It
has hurt no one, and it has saved me just now."

"You were right! No one could blame you," said Blair eagerly, seizing
her hand.

But she disengaged it gently, and went on:--

"And now you wonder why I gave him a meeting here?"

"I wonder at nothing but