marked some weeks ago that she had better not go alone as far as the
river bank.

"It isn't likely that anything would happen by day," he said, "but you
might be shot at from the other side." Annesley was not afraid, and there
was a faint stirring of pleasure in the thought that she was doing
something against his wish on this anniversary. Deliberately, she sat
alone by the river, waiting for the pageant of sunset to pass; and when
she reached home the moon was up, a great white moon that turned the
waving waste of pale, sparse grasses to a silver sea.

She had taken sandwiches and fruit with her, telling the cook that she
would want no dinner when she came back. Away in the cow-punchers'
quarters there was music, and she flung herself into a hammock on the
veranda, to rest and listen.

There was a soft yet cool wind from the south, bringing the fragrance of
creosote blossoms, and it seemed to the girl that never had she seen such
white floods of moonlight, not even that night a year ago at Valley
House.

Even the sky was milk-white. There were no black shadows anywhere, only
dove-gray ones, except under the veranda roof. Her hammock was screened
from the light by one dark shadow, like a straight-hung curtain. Save for
the music of a fiddle and men's voices, the silver-white world lay silent
in enchanted sleep.

Then suddenly something moved. A tall, dark figure was coming to the
veranda. It paused at the cactus fence.

Could it be Knight, home already and on foot? No, it was a woman.

She walked straight and fast and unhesitating to the veranda, where she
sat down on the steps.

Annesley raised herself on her elbow, and peered out of the concealing
shadow. Who could the woman be? It was on the tip of her tongue to call,
"Who are you?" when a sudden lifting of the bent face under a drooping
hat brought it beneath the searchlight of the moon.

The woman was the Countess de Santiago, and the moon's radiance so lit
her dark eyes that she seemed to look straight at Annesley in her
hammock. The girl's heart gave a leap of some emotion like fear, yet not
fear. She did not stop to analyze it, but she knew that she wished to
escape from the woman; and an instant's reflection told her that she
could not be seen if she kept still.

She began to think quickly, and her thoughts, confused at first,
straightened themselves out like threads disentangled from a knot.

The woman had marched up to the veranda with such unfal