retched infatuation of those people," she had once said, "undeceive
them, if you can, and I will assist you. And don't let that affair
of Captain Bunker worry you either. I have already confessed to the
Comandante that he escaped through my carelessness."

"You could not have done otherwise without sacrificing the poor
Secretary, who must have helped you," Hurlstone returned quietly.

Miss Keene bit her lip and dropped the subject. At their next meeting
Hurlstone himself resumed it.

"I hope you don't allow that absurd decree of the Council to disturb
you; I imagine they're quite convinced of their folly. I know that
the Padre is; and I know that he thinks you've earned a right to the
gratitude of the Council in your gracious task at the Presidio school
that is far beyond any fancied political service."

"I really haven't thought about it at all," said Miss Keene coolly. "I
thought it was YOU who were annoyed."

"I? not at all," returned Hurlstone quickly. "I have been able to assist
the Padre in arranging the ecclesiastical archives of the church, and
in suggesting some improvement in codifying the ordinances of the last
forty years. No; I believe I'm earning my living here, and I fancy they
think so."

"Then it isn't THAT that troubles you?" said Miss Keene carelessly, but
glancing at him under the shade of her lashes.

"No," he said coldly, turning away.

Yet unsatisfactory as these brief interviews were, they revived in Miss
Keene the sympathizing curiosity and interest she had always felt for
this singular man, and which had been only held in abeyance at the
beginning of their exile; in fact, she found herself thinking of him
more during the interval when they seldom saw each other, and apparently
had few interests in common, than when they were together on the
Excelsior. Gradually she slipped into three successive phases of feeling
towards him, each of them marked with an equal degree of peril to her
peace of mind. She began with a profound interest in the mystery of
his secluded habits, his strange abstraction, and a recognition of
the evident superiority of a nature capable of such deep
feeling--uninfluenced by those baser distractions which occupied Brace,
Crosby, and Winslow. This phase passed into a settled conviction that
some woman was at the root of his trouble, and responsible for it. With
an instinctive distrust of her own sex, she was satisfied that it must
be either a misplaced or unworthy att