"We must ride on," she suggested faintly.

"No," he said with a sudden dropping of his boyish manner and a slight
lifting of his head. "We must ride together no further, Miss Carr. I
must go back to the work I am hired to do, and you must go on with
your party, whom I hear coming. But when we part here you must bid me
good-by--not as Jessie's sister--but as Christie--the one--the only
woman that I love, or that I ever have loved."

He held out his hand. With the recollection of their previous parting,
she tremblingly advanced her own. He took it, but did not raise it to
his lips. And it was she who found herself half confusedly retaining his
hand in hers, until she dropped it with a blush.

"Then is this the reason you give for deserting us as you have deserted
Devil's Ford?" she said coldly.

He lifted his eyes to her with a strange smile, and said, "Yes," wheeled
his horse, and disappeared in the forest.

He had left her thus abruptly once before, kissed, blushing, and
indignant. He was leaving her now, unkissed, but white and indignant.
Yet she was so self-possessed when the party joined her, that the
singular rencontre and her explanation of the stranger's sudden
departure excited no further comment. Only Jessie managed to whisper in
her ear,--

"I hope you are satisfied now that it wasn't me he meant?"