dden from the world all our lives?"

"I never thought--till now."

"Well, what's your choice--to go--or to stay here--alone with me?"

"Stay!" New-born thought of self, ringing vibrantly in her voice, gave
her answer singular power.

Venters trembled, and then swiftly turned his gaze from her face--from
her eyes. He knew what she had only half divined--that she loved him.

CHAPTER XI. FAITH AND UNFAITH

At Jane Withersteen's home the promise made to Mrs. Larkin to care for
little Fay had begun to be fulfilled. Like a gleam of sunlight through
the cottonwoods was the coming of the child to the gloomy house of
Withersteen. The big, silent halls echoed with childish laughter. In the
shady court, where Jane spent many of the hot July days, Fay's tiny
feet pattered over the stone flags and splashed in the amber stream. She
prattled incessantly. What difference, Jane thought, a child made in her
home! It had never been a real home, she discovered. Even the tidiness
and neatness she had so observed, and upon which she had insisted to her
women, became, in the light of Fay's smile, habits that now lost their
importance. Fay littered the court with Jane's books and papers, and
other toys her fancy improvised, and many a strange craft went floating
down the little brook.

And it was owing to Fay's presence that Jane Withersteen came to see
more of Lassiter. The rider had for the most part kept to the sage. He
rode for her, but he did not seek her except on business; and Jane had
to acknowledge in pique that her overtures had been made in vain. Fay,
however, captured Lassiter the moment he first laid eyes on her.

Jane was present at the meeting, and there was something about it which
dimmed her sight and softened her toward this foe of her people. The
rider had clanked into the court, a tired yet wary man, always looking
for the attack upon him that was inevitable and might come from any
quarter; and he had walked right upon little Fay. The child had been
beautiful even in her rags and amid the surroundings of the hovel in the
sage, but now, in a pretty white dress, with her shining curls brushed
and her face clean and rosy, she was lovely. She left her play and
looked up at Lassiter.

If there was not an instinct for all three of them in that meeting, an
unreasoning tendency toward a closer intimacy, then Jane Withersteen
believed she had been subject to a queer fancy. She imagined any child
would have feared Lassi