and _spring the mine_ on you for a wedding
present _after_. The reason I've told you now is that I wouldn't marry
you now, not if you'd ten millions of dollars in cash in your pocket."

"Why not? If I'm the person you take me for, I'm as rich and clever
now." She still sat with her back to him; her voice so impassive that
even interrogation was hardly expressed in words that had the form of a
question.

"Yes, and you'd be richer and cleverer now with me, by a long chalk,
than without me! If you'd me to say who you are, and that I'd known it
all along, and how you'd got here, and to bring up the railroad fellows
(I've got all their names) who noticed you to bear witness, your claim
would look better in the eyes of the law. 'Twould look a deal better in
the eyes of the world, too, to come as Mrs. Cyril P. Harkness, saying
you had been Miss Cameron, than to come on the stage as Miss White,
laying claim to another name; and it would be a long sight more
comfortable to have me to support and cherish you at such a time than
not to have a friend in the world except the folks whose eyes you've
pulled the wool over, and who'll be mighty shocked. Oh, yes; by Jemima!
you'd be richer and cleverer now with me than without me. But I'll tell
you what I've come here to say"--his manner took a tone more serious;
his mocking smile passed away; he seemed to pause to arrest his own
lightness, and put on an unwonted dignity. "I tell you," he repeated
slowly, "what I've come here to say--I do despise a young lady without a
heart. Do you know what occurred last night? As good an old gentleman as
ever lived was brutally felled to the earth and killed; a poor man who
was never worse than a drunkard has become a murderer, and there's a
many good pious ladies in this town who'll go about till death's day
jeered at as fools. Would you like to be marked for a fool? No, you
wouldn't and neither will they; and if you're the young lady I take you
for, you could have hindered all this, _and_ you didn't. _I_ brought the
old man to this place; I am to blame in that, my own self, I am; but I
tell you, by the salvation of my soul, when I stood last night and heard
him pray, and saw those poor ladies with their white garbs all
bedraggled, around him praying, I said to myself, 'Cyril, you've reason
to call on the rocks and hills to cover you,' and I had grace to be
right down sorry. I'm right down ashamed, and so I'm going to pull up
stakes and go back to