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.
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