of an incongruity between the occupant and her surroundings. With a
smile that vacillated between a habit of familiarity and ease, and a
recent restraint, she motioned him to a chair.
"Miss Mortimer" was still young, still handsome, still fashionably
dressed, and still attractive. From her first greeting to the end of
the interview Cass felt that she knew all about him. This relieved him
from the onus of proving his identity, but seemed to put him vaguely at
a disadvantage. It increased his sense of inexperience and
youthfulness.
"I hope you will believe," she began, "that the few questions I have to
ask you are to satisfy my own heart, and for no other purpose." She
smiled sadly as she went on. "Had it been otherwise, I should have
instituted a legal inquiry, and left this interview to some one cooler,
calmer, and less interested than myself. But I think, I _know_ I can
trust you. Perhaps we women are weak and foolish to talk of an
_instinct_, and when you know my story you may have reason to believe
that but little dependence can be placed on _that_; but I am not wrong
in saying,--am I?" (with a sad smile) "that _you_ are not above that
weakness?" She paused, closed her lips tightly, and grasped her hands
before her. "You say you found that ring in the road some three months
before--the--the--you know what I mean--the body--was discovered?"
"Yes."
"You thought it might have been dropped by some one in passing?"
"I thought so, yes--it belonged to no one in the camp."
"Before your cabin or on the highway?"
"Before my cabin."
"You are _sure_?" There was something so very sweet and sad in her
smile that it oddly made Cass color.
"But my cabin is near the road," he suggested.
"I see! And there was nothing else; no paper nor envelope?"
"Nothing."
"And you kept it because of the odd resemblance one of the names bore
to yours?"
"Yes."
"For no other reason?"
"None." Yet Cass felt he was blushing.
"You'll forgive my repeating a question you have already answered, but
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