ou would take me back with you, and perhaps
send word to my brother where we were, and then"-- She stopped
suddenly, with her eyes fixed on Key's blank face. Her own grew blank,
the joy faded out of her clear eyes, she gently withdrew her hand from
his, and without a word began to resume her disguise.

"Listen to me," said Key passionately. "I am thinking only of YOU. I
want to, and WILL, save you from any blame,--blame you do not
understand even now. There is still time. I will go back to the
convent with you at once. You shall tell me everything; I will tell
you everything on the way."

She had already completely resumed her austere garb, and drew the veil
across her face. With the putting on her coif she seemed to have
extinguished all the joyous youthfulness of her spirit, and moved with
the deliberateness of renunciation towards the door. They descended the
staircase without a word. Those who saw them pass made way for them
with formal respect.

When they were in the street, she said quietly, "Don't give me your
arm--Sisters don't take it." When they had reached the street corner,
she turned it, saying, "This is the shortest way."

It was Key who was now restrained, awkward, and embarrassed. The fire
of his spirit, the passion he had felt a moment before, had gone out of
him, as if she were really the character she had assumed. He said at
last desperately:--

"How long did you live in the hollow?"

"Only two days. My brother was bringing me here to school, but in the
stage coach there was some one with whom he had quarreled, and he
didn't want to meet him with me. So we got out at Skinner's, and came
to the hollow, where his old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Barker, lived."

There was no hesitation nor affectation in her voice. Again he felt
that he would as soon have doubted the words of the Sister she
represented as her own.

"And your brother--did you live with him?"

"No. I was at school at Marysville until he took me away. I saw
little of him for the past two years, for he had business in the
mountains--very rough business, where he couldn't take me, for it kept
him away from the settlements for weeks. I think it had something to
do with cattle, for he was always having a new horse. I was all alone
before that, too; I had no other relations; I had no friends. We had
always been moving about so much, my brother and I. I never saw any
one that I liked, except you, and until yesterday I had