“Ah,” said his brother, quietly, “and what of the younger lady? Perhaps she is not your style, either?”
“Well, no, I should say not,” Ned replied, with the least perceptible scorn in his tone, “not but what she is a lovely girl, and I respect her, and feel sorry for her, but I should think one glimpse of her family would decide that question, once for all.”
“Ned,” said Morton Rutherford, pausing in his walk, directly in front of his brother, “is it possible that you are so blind as not to see that Miss Maverick, as you call her,––I prefer to call her Lyle,––has no connection whatever with the family in which she lives?”
“Do you think so?” Ned inquired, with surprise, “I remember Houston and Miss Gladden expressed the same opinion when I was here before, but I don’t think they had any proof that such was the case, and even if it were so, I don’t see how it helps the matter much, for nobody knows to what sort of a family she really does belong.”
“Ned,” said his brother, indignantly, “I know nothing of the opinion of Houston or Miss Gladden upon this subject, but where are your own eyes, and where is your reason? If you discovered one of the rarest and most beautiful flowers known to exist in the plant world, in a heap of tailings out here among these mines, would you immediately conclude that, because you had found it there, it must be indigenous to the spot? Look at that girl, and tell me if there is one trace in feature, in form, in manner, or in speech, of plebeian blood, and then will you tell me that she is in any way connected with people such as these? They are not merely plebeian, they are low, debased, criminal. They are criminals of the deepest dye, not only capable of any villainy, but already guilty, and to such a degree that their guilt has made them shrinking, skulking cowards.”
“But, Mort, if you are correct, and I don’t say that you are not, how does she come to be in such a place as this, with no memory of anything different?”
“Through the villainy of that man whom you pointed out to me as her father; through his villainy, and in no other way.”
“You think she was stolen?”
“I do; I can see in his face that he has committed some terrible crime,––perhaps many of them,––and he is afraid to look a stranger in the eye; and a glance at that beautiful girl is enough to fasten upon him one of his crimes. She is from a family whose blood is as pure from any taint, physical, mental, or moral, as is your own, and unless I am greatly mistaken, she is not wholly unconscious of this herself.”
“Great Heavens!” exclaimed the younger brother, “I never dreamed of all this! If it is really as you think, I only wish we could find her true home, and have her restored to it, and make that scoundrel suffer for his crime.”