him her suggestion was only a womanly kindness, tempered with womanly
curiosity. But the astonishment and stupefaction of her parents at this
evident corroboration of suspicions they had as yet only half believed
was tinged with superstitious dread. Had she fallen in love with this
helpless stranger? or, more awful to contemplate, was he really no
stranger, but a surreptitious lover thus strategically brought under her
roof? For once they refrained from open criticism. The very magnitude of
their suspicions left them dumb.

It was thus that the virgin Chatelaine of Burnt Ridge Ranch was left to
gaze untrammeled upon her pale and handsome guest, whose silken,
bearded lips and sad, childlike eyes might have suggested a more Exalted
Sufferer in their absence of any suggestion of a grosser material
manhood. But even this imaginative appeal did not enter into her
feelings. She felt for her good-looking, helpless patient a profound
and honest pity. I do not know whether she had ever heard that "pity was
akin to love." She would probably have resented that utterly untenable
and atrocious commonplace. There was no suggestion, real or illusive,
of any previous masterful quality in the man which might have made his
present dependent condition picturesque by contrast. He had come to her
handicapped by an unromantic accident and a practical want of energy and
intellect. He would have to touch her interest anew if, indeed, he
would ever succeed in dispelling the old impression. His beauty, in a
community of picturesquely handsome men, had little weight with her,
except to accent the contrast with their fuller manhood.

Her life had given her no illusions in regard to the other sex. She had
found them, however, more congenial and safer companions than women, and
more accessible to her own sense of justice and honor. In return, they
had respected and admired rather than loved her, in spite of her womanly