He stood there motionless before her, a vast, uncertain bulk in the dim light, but he was breathing hard, and the deep earnestness of his voice had impressed her strongly.

“Why do you ask me that?” she questioned, for the moment uncertain how to answer him.  “I scarcely know her; I know almost nothing regarding her life.”

“Y-you, you are a w-woman, Miss,” he insisted, doggedly, “an’, I t-take it, a woman who will u-understand such th-th-things.  T-tell me, is she on the squar?”

“Yes,” she responded, warmly.  “She has not had much chance, I think, and may have made a mistake, perhaps many of them, but I believe she ’s on the square.”

“Did—­did sh-she come out t-to our m-m-mine spying for Farnham?”

“Really, I don’t know.”

His grave face darkened anxiously; she could perceive the change even in that shadow, and distinguish the sharp grind of his teeth.

“Damn him,” he muttered, his voice bitter with hate.  “It w-would be l-l-like one of his l-low-lived tricks.  Wh-what is that g-girl to him, anyhow?”

It was no pleasant task to hurt this man deliberately, yet, perhaps, it would be best.  Anyway, it was not in Beth Norvell’s nature either to lie or to be afraid.

“He has been her friend; there are some who say her lover.”

He stared fixedly at her, as though she had struck him a stinging, unexpected blow.

“Him?  A-an’ you s-s-say she ’s on the squar?”

“Yes; I say she is on the square, because I think so.  It’s a hard life she ’s had to live, and no one has any right to judge her by strict rules of propriety.  I may not approve, neither do I condemn.  Good women have been deceived before now—­have innocently done wrong in the eyes of the world—­and this Mercedes is a woman.  I know him also, know him to be a cold-blooded, heartless brute.  She is merely a girl, pulsating with the fiery blood of the South, an artist to her fingers’ tips, wayward and reckless.  It would not be very difficult for one of that nature to be led astray by such a consummate deceiver as he is.  I pity her, but I do not reproach.  Yet God have mercy on him when she awakes from her dream, for that time is surely coming, perhaps is here already; and the girl is on the square.  I believe it, she is on the square.”

For a silent, breathless moment Brown did not stir, did not once take his eyes from off her face.  She saw his hand slip down and close hard over the butt of his dangling revolver.  Then he drew a deep breath, his head thrown back, his great shoulders squared.

“D-damn, but that helps me,” he said soberly.  “It—­it sure does.  G-good-night, little g-girl.”

“Are you going to leave me now?”

“Why, sure.  Th-this yere is the h-h-hotel, ain ’t it?  W-well, I ’ve got t-to be back to th-the ‘Little Yankee’ afore d-d-daylight, or thar ‘ll be h-hell to pay, an’ I sure m-mean to see her first, an’—­an’—­maybe h-him.”