"That comes from the peculiarity of our first meeting, the unconventional manner in which we were brought together. I was not my natural self that night, nor have I ever been able since to feel toward you as I have in my relations with other men. Indeed I have been so frank spoken, so careless of social forms, as to make you question in your own mind my real womanhood."
"No; never that!" I protested.
"Oh, but you have," and she laughed softly, a faint trace of bitterness in the sound. "You need not deny, for I have read the truth in your face, yet without resentment. Why should you not, indeed? No man would wish his sister to take the chances I have with an absolute stranger. My only excuse is the seeming necessity, and the confidence I felt in my own strength of character. I permitted myself to come South with you, knowing your purpose to be an illegal one; I placed myself in a false position. In doing this I was actuated by two purposes; one was to save this property which had been willed to my husband by his father. Do you guess the other?"
"No," I said, impressed by the earnestness with which she was speaking. "You will tell me?"
"I mean to; the time has come when I should. It was that I might save you from a crime. You had been kind to me, sympathetic; I—I liked you very much, and I knew you did not understand; that you were being misled. I could not determine then where the fraud was, but I knew there was fraud, and that you would eventually become its victim."
"You cared that much for me?"
"Yes," she confessed frankly, "I did. I would never have told you so under ordinary conditions. But I can now, here, where we are—alone together in this boat." She paused, as though endeavoring to choose the proper words. "We both realize the changed relations between us."
I drew a quick, startled breath.
"That—that I love you!" the exclamation left my lips before I was aware.
"Yes," she said calmly. "I could not help that. At first I never deemed such a result of our friendship possible. I was Philip Henley's wife, and I gave this possible danger scarcely a thought. Indeed it did not seem a danger. While it is true he was husband in name only, yet I was wife forever. That is my religion. Now the conditions are all changed, instantly changed by his death."