Her hands were gripped tightly and her mouth was firm-set in an effort to be brave.

“Why, Eloise, I’d never let Marcos Ramero, nor anybody else, make you one little heart-throb afraid.  If you will only let me help you, I wouldn’t call it trouble; I’d call it by another name.”  The longing to say more made me pause there.

The light was fading overhead, but the church lamps gave a soft glow that seemed to shield off the shadowy gloom.

“Father Josef came all the way from New Mexico to St. Ann’s to have me come back here, and Mother Bridget sent Sister Anita, you remember her, up to St. Louis to come with me by way of New Orleans.  I didn’t tell you that I might be here when your train came in overland because—­because of some things about my own people—­”

The fair head was bowed and the soft voice trembled.

“Don’t be afraid to tell me anything, Little Lees,” I whispered, assuringly.

“I never saw my father, but my mother was very beautiful and loving, and we were so happy together.  I was still a very little girl when she fell sick and they took me away from her.  I never knew when she died nor where she was buried.  Ferdinand Ramero had charge of her property.  He controlled everything after she went away, and I have always lived in fear of his word.  I am helpless when he commands, for he has a strange power over minds; and as to Marcos—­you know what a little cat I was.  I had to be to live with him.  It wasn’t until we were all at Bent’s Fort that I got over my fear of you and Beverly.  The day you threw Marcos out of here was the first time I ever had a champion to defend me.”

I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her what I dared not think she would let me say.  So I listened in sympathetic silence.

“Then came an awful day out at Agua Fria, and Father Josef took me in his arms as he would take a baby, and sang me to sleep with the songs my mother loved to sing.  I think it must have been midnight when I wakened.  It was dreary and cold, and Esmond Clarenden and Ferdinand Ramero were there, and Father Josef and Jondo.”

And then she told me, as she remembered them, the happenings of that night at Agua Fria, the same story that Jondo told me later.  But until that evening I had known nothing of how Eloise had come to us.

“You know the rest,” Eloise went on “I have had a boarding-school life, and no real friends, except the Clarenden family, outside of these schools.”

“You poor little girl!  One of the same Clarenden family is ready to be your friend now,” I said, tenderly, remembering keenly how Uncle Esmond and Jondo had loved and protected three orphan children.

“The Rameros think nobody but a Ramero can do that now.  Marcos is very much changed.  He has been educated in Europe, is handsome, and courtly in his manners, and as his father’s heir he will be wealthy.  He came to-night to ask me, to urge and plead with me, to marry him.”  Eloise paused.