coming? Your horse is gone! What--walk, Miss Sanford?
Indeed, he shall not, and after having carried poor me all that
distance." (For a woman in a dead faint Inez was oddly alive to what had
been going on.) "You are coming right in here, Mr. Ray!" and she edged
vigorously over against the stout structured Priscilla in determined
effort to make room for Sandy beside her. So there he rode, saying very
little, but tumultuously thinking, Heaven only knows what, for Inez had
then eyes, ears, aye--lips, had he dared--only for him. She nestled
close and confiding in the arm trembling about her slender shoulders. He
felt the contact of her rounded form. His head was in a whirl, his heart
was in a tumult, when at last Priscilla reined in at the major's gate,
and again Sandy had almost to carry the lovely burden up the major's
steps and, with one, long, melting gaze from her glorious eyes, with
five murmured words from her exquisite, parted, passionate lips, with a
thrilling pressure from both her little hands, he delivered her into the
waiting arms of Felicie, to become again a limp and prostrate being, to
require at once her handmaid's best services--and champagne. The
quantity of Pommery Sec consumed in that house during the major's
confinement thereto, said Felicie afterwards, was, _o ciel_, of the most
incredible!

It can readily be conceived that Priscilla could not soon forget the
incidents of that day's drive, the last she ever took with Inez Dwight.
What with the apparition of Blenke and the blanketed Indians at the
ravine, the runaway of the ponies on the prairie, and the astounding
revelation that followed, the honest-hearted girl was utterly at a loss
as to her duty in the premises. Six weeks back she would not have
hesitated. She would have known infallibly just what to say and do, and
unflinchingly would she have said and done it. But, all was different
now. Her faith was strong as ever, firm and unshaken, but her
self-confidence was gone. She had made some of the worst mistakes of her
thirty years within the last three months. She had justly offended her
fondest, truest friends; had brought dire distress, untold suffering, on
a most loving and devoted father, and cruel punishment to an innocent
and trusting child. Her head had been bowed to the dust in
self-condemnation, in humility unspeakable. She could have dragged
herself upon her knees every inch of the road from their door to
Dwight's, and with streaming eye