y. No," as
he strove to take her hand, "please wait. And then, last night when
Horace Penfield asked you to show the photographs I saw a confirmation of
my fears, and when Ydo entered I was still more frightened. I suspected
an arrangement, a plot between them. There were the photographs and maps
on that little table where you had carelessly thrown them; any one could
take them; and then when Ydo was going through her nonsense over that
glass ball and had every one's attention fixed on her Horace crept around
and stood so near the table that I was sure he was going to seize them,
so I took them myself. I twisted the gauze scarf which was about my neck
around them and carried them out that way. No one noticed. And here they
are." She lifted the package from her muff, still wrapped in the scarf,
and held it out to him. "No one has even glanced at them; not even
myself."

"And you did this to save me! Oh, Marcia, Marcia!" He was more moved than
he could express.

"Wait!" She lifted her hand imperatively. "I haven't finished. There are
lots of things to tell you yet."

"Postpone them!" he cried ardently. "Forget them until to-morrow! Ah,
dearest, you are tired. You have borne too much strain already."

"No, no!" she cried. "It grows late, and I must, must tell you these
things before I leave you."

"Leave me!" he cried. "Try it. When you go I go with you."

They both laughed. "But listen, Bobby," she pleaded; and at that "Bobby"
his heart glowed, he was surely forgiven. "Don't you want to know how I
happened to be the largest owner of the vast Mariposa estate?"

"Oh, indeed I do!" he said. "Are you the largest owner?"

"Yes," she nodded. "You see, at the height of his prosperity, my father
bought it from a Mr. Willoughby, whose wife inherited it. No one knew it,
but even at that time my father's mind was affected, and before long his
disease, a softening of the brain, had fully manifested itself. His
greatest interest in life had always been business, and after this change
came upon him he got all kinds of strange ideas in his head, among them a
perfect mania for destroying papers. It is principally for that reason,"
with a slight shrug of her shoulders, "that we were left almost
penniless. But he had a head clerk, a Mr. Carrothers, Ydo's father, by
the way, who saw how things were going, and who, by various ruses,
succeeded in saving some of the papers, among them those relating to the
Mariposa estate. These were