"In time—yes. It is quite easy to forgive yourself on account of those people. I found it so."
"Oh, don't! You make me feel as if I ought never to speak to myself."
"Then don't," said Mrs. Dorrington, calmly. "You can speak to me instead of to that ignorant girl."
"Oh, you sweetest!" cried Nan, hugging her step-mother; "I am going to have you for my doll."
"Very well, then," said Mrs. Dorrington, shrugging her shoulders; "but you will have some trouble on your hands—yes, more than those people give you."
"Johnny, you are my little mother, and you never gave me any trouble in your life. I am the one that is troublesome; I am troubling you now."
"Silly thing! will you be good?" cried Mrs. Dorrington, tapping Nan lightly on the cheek. "How can you trouble me when I don't know what you mean? You haven't told me."
"I thought you could guess as well as I can," replied Nan.
"About some things—yes; but not about this terrible danger that is to overcome those people."
Whereupon, Nan told Mrs. Dorrington of the conversation she and Gabriel had overheard. To this information she added her suspicions that Gabriel intended to do something desperate; and then she gave a very vivid description of the strange white man, of his pale and eager countenance, his glittering, shifty eyes, and his thin, cruel lips.