looked from one sister to the other.
"Oh, I wonder if I dare tell you?"

"If there is anything in which we can help you, tell us, by all means!"
answered Ruth, warmly--sympathetically. "But we don't want to force
ourselves----"

"Oh, no! It isn't that. I'm only wondering what you will think of me
afterward."

"We shall love you just the same!" cried impulsive Alice.

"Don't be too sure. But I feel that I must tell some one. I have borne
all I can alone. It is getting to the point where I fear I shall scream
my secret to the cameras--or some one!"

Then Estelle had a secret!

"Do tell us. Perhaps we can help you--or perhaps my father can,"
suggested Ruth.

"I don't believe any one can help me," said Estelle. "But at least it
will be a relief to tell it. I--I am living under false pretenses!" she
blurted out desperately.

"False pretenses!" repeated Alice. At once her mind flashed back to Miss
Dixon's ring. Was it the taking of this that Estelle was hinting at? The
girl must have guessed what was in the mind of her hearers, for she
hastened to add:

"Oh, it isn't anything disgraceful. It's just a misfortune. You remember
you have been asking me where I learned to ride--whether I didn't use to
live on a ranch--questions like that. Well, you must have noticed that I
didn't answer."

"Yes, we did notice, and we spoke about it," said truthful Ruth.

"We thought you didn't wish to tell," added Alice.

"Wish to tell! Oh, my dears, I would have been only too glad to tell if
I could."

"Why can't you?" asked Ruth. "Are you bound by some vow of secrecy? Is
it dangerous for you to reveal the past?"

"No, it is simply impossible!"

"Impossible!" the two sisters exclaimed.

"Yes, I can no more tell you what life I lived, where I lived, who I
was, or what I was doing, up to a time of about three or four years ago,
than I can fly."

"Why not?" asked Alice, puzzled.

"Because the past--up to the time I named--is a perfect blank to me. My
mind refuses absolutely to tell me who I was or where I lived--who my
people were--anything of the past. My mind is like a blank sheet of
paper. I can remember nothing. Oh, isn't it awful!" and she burst into
tears.

CHAPTER XVIII

"WHAT CAN WE DO?"

"You poor dear!" cried Alice, and she knelt down on the floor beside
Estelle and put her arms about the weeping girl. Ruth, too, with an
expression of sympathy, stroked the bowed head.

"We want so much to help you,"