"

She buried her face in her hands a moment, and then said, quietly:

"Did you know that my stepfather had married an Indian woman?"

"Yes. Do you mean that you didn't know?"

"No, I didn't know."

"What a fool I was for not telling you these things!" exclaimed Lowell.
"I might have saved you a lot of humiliation."

"You could have saved me more than humiliation. He told me all about
her--the Indian woman. He laughed when he told me. He said he was going
to kill me as he had killed her--by inches."

Lowell grew cold with horror.

"But this is criminal!" he declared. "Let me take you away from this
place at once. I'll find some place where you can go--back to my
mother's home in the East."

"No, it's all right now. I'm in no danger, and I can't leave this place.
In fact I don't want to," said the girl, putting her hand on Lowell's
arm.

"Do you mean to tell me that he treated you so fiendishly during the
first few days, and then suddenly changed and became the most
considerate of relatives?"

"I tell you I am being treated all right now. I merely told you what
happened at first--part of the cruel things he said--because I couldn't
keep it all to myself any longer. Besides, that Indian woman--poor
little thing!--is on my mind all the time."

"Then you won't come away?"

"No--he needs me."

"Well, this beats anything I ever heard of--" began Lowell. Then he
stopped after a glance at her face. She was deathly pale. Her eyes were
unnaturally bright, and her hands trembled. It seemed to him that the
school-girl he had brought to the ranch a few days before had become a
woman through some great mental trial.

"Come and see, or hear, for yourself," said Helen.

Wonderingly, Lowell stepped into the ranch-house kitchen. Helen pointed
to the living-room.

Through the partly open door, Lowell caught a glimpse of an aristocratic
face, surmounted by gray hair. A white hand drummed on the arm of a
library chair which contained pillows and blankets. From the room there
came a voice that brought to Lowell a sharp and disagreeable memory of
the cutting voice he had heard in false welcome to Helen Ervin a few
days before. Only now there was querulous insistence in the voice--the
insistence of the sick person who calls upon some one who has proved
unfailing in the performance of the tasks of the sick-room.

Helen stepped inside the room and closed the door. Lowell heard her
talking soothingly to the sick man, and t