moment when I
almost doubted, but it was only for a moment. Then I seemed to sense
your plan, your purpose, and from that time on I have trusted you more
completely than ever before. This is confessing a great deal, for it
is my nature to be reticent--I have always been hard to become
acquainted with."

"I have not found you so; I feel as though I had known you always."

"That comes from the peculiarity of our first meeting, the
unconventional manner in which we were brought together. I was not my
natural self that night, nor have I ever been able since to feel toward
you as I have in my relations with other men. Indeed I have been so
frank spoken, so careless of social forms, as to make you question in
your own mind my real womanhood."

"No; never that!" I protested.

"Oh, but you have," and she laughed softly, a faint trace of bitterness
in the sound. "You need not deny, for I have read the truth in your
face, yet without resentment. Why should you not, indeed? No man
would wish his sister to take the chances I have with an absolute
stranger. My only excuse is the seeming necessity, and the confidence
I felt in my own strength of character. I permitted myself to come
South with you, knowing your purpose to be an illegal one; I placed
myself in a false position. In doing this I was actuated by two
purposes; one was to save this property which had been willed to my
husband by his father. Do you guess the other?"

"No," I said, impressed by the earnestness with which she was speaking.
"You will tell me?"

"I mean to; the time has come when I should. It was that I might save
you from a crime. You had been kind to me, sympathetic; I--I liked you
very much, and I knew you did not understand; that you were being
misled. I could not determine then where the fraud was, but I knew
there was fraud, and that you would eventually become its victim."

"You cared that much for me?"

"Yes," she confessed frankly, "I did. I would never have told you so
under ordinary conditions. But I can now, here, where we are--alone
together in this boat." She paused, as though endeavoring to choose
the proper words. "We both realize the changed relations between us."

I drew a quick, startled breath.

"That--that I love you!" the exclamation left my lips before I was
aware.

"Yes," she said calmly. "I could not help that. At first I never
deemed such a result of our friendship possible. I was Philip Henley's
wi