I should fancy
every time I looked out of the window that I saw the head of that man
between the bars. No! I am only thankful that I wasn't here at the time,
and that I can keep my remembrance of the dear old place unchanged." She
checked herself a little abruptly, and then added somewhat irrelevantly
but cheerfully, "Well, you have been away? What have you done?"

"Nothing," said Clarence.

"Then you have kept your promise," she said, with the same nervous
hilarity.

"I have returned here without making any other engagement," he said
gravely; "but I have not altered my determination."

She shrugged her shoulders again, or, as it seemed, the skin of her
tightly fitting black dress above them, with the sensitive shiver of a
highly groomed horse, and moved to the hearth as if for warmth; put her
slim, slippered foot upon the low fender, drawing, with a quick hand,
the whole width of her skirt behind her until it clingingly accented the
long, graceful curve from her hip to her feet. All this was so unlike
her usual fastidiousness and repose that he was struck by it. With her
eyes on the glowing embers of the hearth, and tentatively advancing her
toe to its warmth and drawing it away, she said:--

"Of course, you must please yourself. I am afraid I have no right except
that of habit and custom to keep you here; and you know," she added,
with an only half-withheld bitterness, "that they are not always very
effective with young people who prefer to have the ordering of their own
lives. But I have something still to tell you before you finally decide.
I have, as you know, been looking over my--over Mr. Peyton's papers very
carefully. Well, as a result, I find, Mr. Brant, that there is no record
whatever of his wonderfully providential purchase of the Sisters' title
from you; that he never entered into any written agreement with you, and
never paid you a cent; and that, furthermore, his papers show me that
he never even contemplated it; nor, indeed, even knew of YOUR owning
the title when he died. Yes, Mr. Brant, it was all to YOUR foresight and
prudence, and YOUR generosity alone, that we owe our present possession
of the rancho. When you helped us into that awful window, it was YOUR
house we were entering; and if it had been YOU, and not those wretches,
who had chosen to shut the doors on us after the funeral, we could never
have entered here again. Don't deny it, Mr. Brant. I have suspected it a
long time, and when you