"Have you forgotten, Mr. Yankton?" she asked calmly, her face turning a delicate crimson.
"Then read—read!" he cried in desperation, scarcely able to control himself. She knew it could not last much longer. She slowly unfolded the large sheets of paper and began to read their contents in the moonlight.
"Aloud, please," he said.
"Why aloud?"
"Oh, just as you please!"
"Very well, if you wish it. 'Dear Dick,' she began with a slight hesitancy. 'When this reaches you I shall have passed over the border to that unknown range from whence nobody ever returns. Enclosed you will find the record of Don Felipe Ramirez's and Pepita Delaguerra's marriage which, at Don Felipe's instigation, I stole from the register in the church at Onava, giving him a copy of the same which he destroyed, believing it to be the original. I did this with the intention of extorting money from him later on. I and Joaquin Flores and his wife were the only witnesses to the marriage. But there is a sequel. Pepita gave birth to a child, a girl, after Felipe deserted her. I learned later that Chiquita and the two Flores concealed it somewhere in one of the Indian pueblos near La Jara, as they feared Don Felipe would make way with the child should he learn of its existence.'
"How strange!" exclaimed Bessie excitedly. "Why, that was Don Felipe's own child which he introduced this evening and said was Chiquita's."
"Exactly," said Dick, quietly.
"But I don't see what all this has to do with me," she added.
"Proceed, please," he answered. "That's not the only surprise his letter contains."