't
the heart to tell her all."

"All? What does she know? What does this man know? What has been
told her?" she said rapidly.

"She only knows that the name she has taken she has no right to."

"Right to? Why, it was written on the Trust--Yerba Buena."

"No, not that. She thought it was a mistake. She took the name of
Arguello."

"What?" said Mrs. Argalls, suddenly grasping the invalid's wrist with
both hands. "What name?" her eyes were startled from their rigid
coldness, her lips were colorless.

"Arguello! It was some foolish schoolgirl fancy which that hound
helped to foster in her. Why--what's the matter, Kate?"

The woman dropped the helpless man's wrist, then, with an effort,
recovered herself sufficiently to rise, and, with an air of increased
decorum, as if the spiritual character of their interview excluded
worldly intrusion, adjusted the screen around his bed, so as partly to
hide her own face and Pendleton's. Then, dropping into the chair
beside him, she said, in her old voice, from which the burden of ten
long years seemed to have been lifted,--

"Harry, what's that you're playing on me?"

"I don't understand you," said Pendleton amazedly.

"Do you mean to say you don't know it, and didn't tell her yourself?"
she said curtly.

"What? Tell her what?" he repeated impatiently.

"That Arguello WAS her father!"

"Her father?" He tried to struggle to his elbow again, but she laid
her hand masterfully upon his shoulder and forced him back. "Her
father!" he repeated hurriedly. "Jose Arguello! Great God!--are you
sure?"

Quietly and yet mechanically gathering the scattered tracts from the
coverlet, and putting them back, one by one in her reticule, she closed
it and her lips with a snap as she uttered--"Yes."

Pendleton remained staring at her silently, "Yes," he muttered, "it may
have been some instinct of the child's, or some diabolical fancy of
Briones'. But," he said bitterly, "true or not, she has no right to
his name."

"And I say she HAS."

She had risen to her feet, with her arms folded across her breast, in
an attitude of such Puritan composure that the distant spectators might
have thought she was delivering an exordium to the prostrate man.

"I met Jose Arguello, for the second time, in New Orleans," she said
slowly, "eight years ago. He was still rich, but ruined in health by
dissipation. I was tired of my way of life. He proposed that I should
marry him to take