“I am so sorry,” she said. “I hoped you might be able to tell me something about him. If you can tell me nothing, I must tell you. I must talk to somebody. You see how it is. Mother is dead. Father sent me to school in the East. It was there that I met Lawton. He was so handsome! He was the leading man in a company that I saw. Then, after the company disbanded for the season, he came back to spend the summer in the town where I was at school. I suppose I was foolish, but fell in love with him. We were together a great deal. We became engaged.”
Frank fancied he knew what was coming. The girl was skipping over the story as lightly as possible, but she was letting him understand it all.
“I didn’t write father about it,” she went on, “for I knew he would not approve of Lawton. He wanted me to marry Brandon King, who owns the Silver Forks Ranch. I did not love King. I loved Lawton Kilgore. But the principal of the school found out what was going on, and he wrote father. Then Lawton disappeared, and I heard nothing from him. They say he deserted me. I do not believe it. I think he was driven away. I waited and waited for him, but I could not study, I could not do anything. He never came back, and, at last, father came and took me away. He brought me here. He was ashamed of me, but he said he would not leave me to starve, for I was his own daughter. His kindness was cruel, for he cut me off from the world. Still I believe that some day Lawton will come for me and take me away from here. I believe he will come—if they have not killed him!”
She whispered the final words.
“They? Who?” asked Frank, startled.
“My father and my brother,” she answered. “They were furious enough to kill him. They swore they would.”
She had told Merry her story, and she seemed to feel relieved. She asked him many questions about the actors he knew. He said he had the pictures of nearly all who had taken parts in his two plays. She asked to see them, and he brought them out from his large traveling case, showing them to her one by one. She looked at them all with interest.
Of a sudden, she gave a low, sharp cry. Her hand darted out and caught up one of the photographs.
“Here—here!——” she panted. “You have his picture here! This is Lawton Kilgore—Lawton, my lover!”
It was the picture of Leslie Lawrence!