“Is he?” and again Hanson strove to speak with disarming indifference.  “How do you know?”

“I heard him and Bob Flick planning it,” she answered.  “They don’t think it’s safe to try and get him out of the country now.”  Then, having delivered herself of her burden of important news, she suffered one of her quick revulsions of fright, and clapped her hand to her mouth and turned white.

“Oh, Lordy!” she cried.  “Lordy!  Ain’t I the leaky vessel, though!  Oh, say, Mr. Hanson,” she clutched his arm like a terrified child, “promise me you won’t give me away.”

“Sure,” soothingly.  “Why, Mrs. Gallito, you got to believe that everything that you tell me just goes in one ear and out of the other.  But look here, just to take your mind off of this, I wish you’d do me a little favor.”

“’Deed I will,” she fervently assured him.  “What is it?”

“Why, Miss Pearl and I are going riding to-morrow morning, and I particularly want to talk business to her.  You know how anxious I am to get her signed up.  Well, I wish you’d manage to keep Hughie from butting in as usual?”

“Is that all?” she cried. “’Course I’ll keep Hughie at home.  I didn’t realize how he was tagging round after you and Pearl.  I want him to help me, anyway.  We got to patch up my chicken house and yard so’s to keep the coyotes out some way or other.”

True to her word, she kept Hugh so busily employed the next morning that to Hanson’s infinite relief he and Pearl were able to ride off alone.

“I’m going to take you to a palm grove to-day,” said Pearl, as they started off.

She was in the gayest of humors, and for a time she bantered and coquetted with him with an unrestrained and childlike enjoyment in her mood, taking his ardent lovemaking as a matter of course; but, gradually, as they rode, she became more quiet and fell into silence, the Sphynx expression appearing on her face.

Suddenly she leaned forward in her saddle and looked at him.  There was a hint of laughter in her glance, and yet behind it a certain serious scrutiny.

“I’m wondering a lot about you, do you know it?” she drawled softly.

“Turn about’s fair play, then, honey,” he answered.  “You keep me guessing all the time.  But what is it now?”

She did not answer him immediately, but rode on in silence as if cogitating whether or no she would reply to his question, and in some way he received the impression that it was not the first time she had mentally debated the matter.  But finally she decided to speak, and again she turned in her saddle and regarded him with that piercing scrutiny which reminded him uncomfortably of her father.

“Say,” she began, with apparent irrelevance, “what you been doing, anyway?”

“Me!” cried Hanson.  “You know.  Been falling in love with you as hard as I could, and”—­his voice ringing with a passionate sincerity—­“that’s God’s truth, Pearl.”