xcused."

"Then you are a heartless, cruel woman," flamed Frances. "I'm good--as
good as you are." The color patched her cheek and ebbed again. "I
wouldn't treat a dog as you do me. Oh, cruel, cruel!"

The surprising extravagance of her protest, the despair that rang in the
fresh young voice, caught the interest of the Mexican girl. Surely such
a heart-broken cry did not consist with guilt. But the facts--when a
young and pretty girl masquerades through the country in the garb of a
boy with a handsome young man, not much room for doubt is left.

Frances was quick to see that the issue was reopened. "Oh, senorita, it
isn't as you think. Do I look like--" She broke off to cover with her
hands a face in which the pink and white warred with alternate success.
"I ought not to have come. I ought never to have come. I see that now.
But I didn't think he would know. You see, I had always passed as a boy
when I wanted to."

"A remarkably pretty one, child," said Miss Carmencita, a smile dimpling
her cheeks. "But how do you mean that you had passed as a boy?"

Frances explained, giving a rapid sketch of her life with the Hardmans
during which she had appeared every night on the stage as a boy without
the deception being suspected. She had cultivated the tricks and ways
of boys, had tried to dress to carry out the impression, and had always
succeeded until she had made the mistake of putting on a gypsy girl's
dress a couple of days before.

Carmencita heard her out, but not as a judge. Very early in the story
her doubts fled and she succumbed to the mothering instinct in her. She
took the American girl in her arms and laughed and cried with her; for
her imagination seized on the romance of the story and delighted in its
fresh unconventionality. Since she had been born Carmencita's life
had been ordered for her with precision by the laws of caste. Her
environment wrapped her in so that she must follow a set and beaten
path. It was, to be sure, a flower-strewn one, but often she impotently
rebelled against its very orderliness. And here in her arms was a victim
of that adventurous romance she had always longed so passionately to
know. Was it wonder she found it in her heart to both love and envy the
subject of it?

"And this young cavalier--the Senor Bucky, is it you call him?--surely
you love him, my dear."

"Oh, senorita!" The blushing face was buried on her new friend's
shoulder. "You don't know how good he is."

"Then