“Then you have kept your promise,” she said, with the same nervous hilarity.

“I have returned here without making any other engagement,” he said gravely; “but I have not altered my determination.”

She shrugged her shoulders again, or, as it seemed, the skin of her tightly fitting black dress above them, with the sensitive shiver of a highly groomed horse, and moved to the hearth as if for warmth; put her slim, slippered foot upon the low fender, drawing, with a quick hand, the whole width of her skirt behind her until it clingingly accented the long, graceful curve from her hip to her feet.  All this was so unlike her usual fastidiousness and repose that he was struck by it.  With her eyes on the glowing embers of the hearth, and tentatively advancing her toe to its warmth and drawing it away, she said:—­

“Of course, you must please yourself.  I am afraid I have no right except that of habit and custom to keep you here; and you know,” she added, with an only half-withheld bitterness, “that they are not always very effective with young people who prefer to have the ordering of their own lives.  But I have something still to tell you before you finally decide.  I have, as you know, been looking over my—­over Mr. Peyton’s papers very carefully.  Well, as a result, I find, Mr. Brant, that there is no record whatever of his wonderfully providential purchase of the Sisters’ title from you; that he never entered into any written agreement with you, and never paid you a cent; and that, furthermore, his papers show me that he never even contemplated it; nor, indeed, even knew of your owning the title when he died.  Yes, Mr. Brant, it was all to your foresight and prudence, and your generosity alone, that we owe our present possession of the rancho.  When you helped us into that awful window, it was your house we were entering; and if it had been you, and not those wretches, who had chosen to shut the doors on us after the funeral, we could never have entered here again.  Don’t deny it, Mr. Brant.  I have suspected it a long time, and when you spoke of changing your position, I determined to find out if it wasn’t I who had to leave the house rather than you.  One moment, please.  And I did find out, and it was I. Don’t speak, please, yet.  And now,” she said, with a quick return to her previous nervous hilarity, “knowing this, as you did, and knowing, too, that I would know it when I examined the papers,—­don’t speak, I’m not through yet,—­don’t you think that it was just a little cruel for you to try to hurry me, and make me come here instead of your coming to me in San Francisco, when I gave you leave for that purpose?”

“But, Mrs. Peyton,” gasped Clarence.

“Please don’t interrupt me,” said the lady, with a touch of her old imperiousness, “for in a moment I must join my guests.  When I found you wouldn’t tell me, and left it to me to find out, I could only go away as I did, and really leave you to control what I believed was your own property.  And I thought, too, that I understood your motives, and, to be frank with you, that worried me; for I believed I knew the disposition and feelings of a certain person better than yourself.”