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 only HEARD you."
Her perfect naivete alternately thrilled him with pain and doubt. In his awkwardness and uneasiness he was brutal.
"Yes, but you must have met somebody—other men—here even, when you were out with your schoolfellows, or perhaps on an adventure like this."
Her white coif turned towards him quickly. "I never wanted to know anybody else. I never cared to see anybody else. I never would have gone out in this way but for you," she said hurriedly. After a pause she added in a frightened tone: "That didn't sound like your voice then. It didn't sound like it a moment ago either."
"But you are sure that you know my voice," he said, with affected gayety. "There were two others in the hollow with me that night."