d take him.

At sundown he stopped again, about ten miles from the town, and cared
for his now tired beast. He knew her capacity, however, and calculated
that she could stand the additional ten miles without injury. The mare
set out with reluctance, but soon settled resignedly down into a steady
jog.

Memory had hitherto assailed Tryon with the vision of past joys. As he
neared the town, imagination attacked him with still more moving
images. He had left her, this sweet flower of womankind--white or not,
God had never made a fairer!--he had seen her fall to the hard
pavement, with he knew not what resulting injury. He had left her
tender frame--the touch of her finger-tips had made him thrill with
happiness--to be lifted by strange hands, while he with heartless pride
had driven deliberately away, without a word of sorrow or regret. He
had ignored her as completely as though she had never existed. That he
had been deceived was true. But had he not aided in his own deception?
Had not Warwick told him distinctly that they were of no family, and
was it not his own fault that he had not followed up the clue thus
given him? Had not Rena compared herself to the child's nurse, and had
he not assured her that if she were the nurse, he would marry her next
day? The deception had been due more to his own blindness than to any
lack of honesty on the part of Rena and her brother. In the light of
his present feelings they seemed to have been absurdly outspoken. He
was glad that he had kept his discovery to himself. He had considered
himself very magnanimous not to have exposed the fraud that was being
perpetrated upon society: it was with a very comfortable feeling that
he now realized that the matter was as profound a secret as before.

"She ought to have been born white," he muttered, adding weakly, "I
would to God that I had never found her out!"

Drawing near the bridge that crossed the river to the town, he pictured
to himself a pale girl, with sorrowful, tear-stained eyes, pining away
in the old gray house behind the cedars for love of him, dying,
perhaps, of a broken heart. He would hasten to her; he would dry her
tears with kisses; he would express sorrow for his cruelty.

The tired mare had crossed the bridge and was slowly toiling up Front
Street; she was near the limit of her endurance, and Tryon did not urge
her.

They might talk the matter over, and if they must part, part at least
they would in peace