"Mr. Stewart, will you please come in?" she asked, after that
long pause.

"I reckon not," he said. The hopelessness of his tone meant that
he knew he was not fit to enter a room with her, and did not care
or cared too much.

Madeline went to the door. The man's face was hard, yet it was
sad, too. And it touched her.

"I shall not tell my brother of your--your rudeness to me," she
began. It was impossible for her to keep the chill out of her
voice, to speak with other than the pride and aloofness of her
class. Nevertheless, despite her loathing, when she had spoken
so far it seemed that kindness and pity followed involuntarily.
"I choose to overlook what you did because you were not wholly
accountable, and because there must be no trouble between Alfred
and you. May I rely on you to keep silence and to seal the lips
of that priest? And you know there was a man killed or injured
there last night. I want to forget that dreadful thing. I don't
want it known that I heard--"

"The Greaser didn't die," interrupted Stewart.

"Ah! then that's not so bad, after all. I am glad for the sake
of your friend--the little Mexican girl."

A slow scarlet wave overspread his face, and his shame was
painful to see. That fixed in Madeline's mind a conviction that
if he was a heathen he was not wholly bad. And it made so much