ls of her hair.
Calm and erect again, she put her little hand to her jacket pocket.

"I only wanted you to read a letter I got yesterday," she said, taking
out an envelope.

The spell was broken. Paul caught eagerly at the hand that held the
letter, and would have drawn her to him; but she put him aside gravely
but sweetly.

"Read that letter!"

"Tell me of YOURSELF first!" he broke out passionately. "Why you fled
from me, and why I now find you here, by the merest chance, without a
word of summons from yourself, Yerba? Tell me who is with you? Are
you free and your own mistress--free to act for yourself and me?
Speak, darling--don't be cruel! Since that night I have longed for
you, sought for you, and suffered for you every day and hour. Tell me
if I find you the same Yerba who wrote"--

"Read that letter!"

"I care for none but the one you left me. I have read and reread it,
Yerba--carried it always with me. See! I have it here!" He was in
the act of withdrawing it from his breast-pocket, when she put up her
hand piteously.

"Please, Paul, please--read this letter first!"

There was something in her new supplicating grace, still retaining the
faintest suggestion of her old girlish archness, that struck him. He
took the letter and opened it. It was from Colonel Pendleton.

Plainly, concisely, and formally, without giving the name of his
authority or suggesting his interview with Mrs. Argalls, he had
informed Yerba that he had documentary testimony that she was the
daughter of the late Jose de Arguello, and legally entitled to bear his
name. A copy of the instructions given to his wife, recognizing Yerba
Buena, the ward of the San Francisco Trust, as his child and hers, and
leaving to the mother the choice of making it known to her and others,
was inclosed.

Paul turned an unchanged face upon Yerba, who was watching him eagerly,
uneasily, almost breathlessly.

"And you think this concerns ME!" he said bitterly. "You think only of
this, when I speak of the precious letter that bade me hope, and
brought me to you?"

"Paul," said the girl, with wondering eyes and hesitating lips; "do you
mean to say that--that--this is--nothing to you?"

"Yes--but forgive me, darling!" he broke out again, with a sudden vague
remorsefulness, as he once more sought her elusive hand. "I am a
brute--an egotist! I forgot that it might be something to YOU."

"Paul," continued the girl, her voice quivering with