"

"It seems to be so natural and obvious an explanation of the mystery
that I only wonder it was not thought of before," said Paul, with that
perfect sincerity that made his sympathy so effective.

"You see,"--still under her pretty eyelids, and the tender promise of a
smile parting her little mouth,--"I'm believing that you tell the truth
when you say you don't know anything about it."

It was a desperate moment with Paul, but his sympathetic instincts, and
possibly his luck, triumphed. His momentary hesitation easily
simulated the caution of a conscientious man; his knit eyebrows and
bright eyes, lowered in an effort of memory, did the rest. "I remember
it all so indistinctly," he said, with literal truthfulness; "there was
a veiled lady present, tall and dark, to whom Mayor Hammersley and the
colonel showed a singular, and, it struck me, as an almost
superstitious, respect. I remember now, distinctly, I was impressed
with the reverential way they both accompanied her to the door at the
end of the interview." He raised his eyes slightly; the young girl's
red lips were parted; that illumination of the skin, which was her
nearest approach to color, had quite transfigured her face. He felt,
suddenly, that she believed it, yet he had no sense of remorse. He
half believed it himself; at least, he remembered the nobility of the
mother's self-renunciation and its effect upon the two men. Why should
not the daughter preserve this truthful picture of her mother's
momentary exaltation? Which was the most truthful--that, or the
degrading facts? "You speak of a secret," he added. "I can remember
little more than that the Mayor asked me to forget from that moment the
whole occurrence. I did not know at the time how completely I should
fulfill his request. You must remember, Miss Yerba, as your Lady
Superior has, that I was absurdly young at the time. I don't know but
that I may have thought, in my youthful inexperience, that this sort of
thing was of common occurrence. And then, I had my own future to
make--and youth is brutally selfish. I was quite friendless and
unknown when I left San Francisco for the mines, at the time you
entered the convent as Yerba Buena."

She smiled, and made a slight impulsive gesture, as if she would have
drawn nearer to him, but checked herself, still smiling, and without
embarrassment. It may have been a movement of youthful camaraderie,
and that occasional maternal rather than si