Sally’s eyes changed from blank gulfs to dilating, shadowing, quickening windows of thought.  “Russ-ell Archi-bald Sittell,” she echoed.  “Ranger!  Secret aid to Steele!”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re no cowboy?”

“No.”

“Only a make-believe one?”

“Yes.”

“And the drinking, the gambling, the association with those low men—­that was all put on?”

“Part of the game, Sally.  I’m not a drinking man.  And I sure hate those places I had to go in, and all that pertains to them.”

“Oh, so that’s it!  I knew there was something.  How glad—­how glad I am!” Then Sally threw her arms around my neck, and without reserve or restraint began to kiss me and love me.  It must have been a moment of sheer gladness to feel that I was not disreputable, a moment when something deep and womanly in her was vindicated.  Assuredly she was entirely different from what she had ever been before.

There was a little space of time, a sweet confusion of senses, when I could not but meet her half-way in tenderness.  Quite as suddenly, then she began to cry.  I whispered in her ear, cautioning her to be careful, that my life was at stake; and after that she cried silently, with one of her arms round my neck, her head on my breast, and her hand clasping mine.  So I held her for what seemed a long time.  Indistinct voices came to me and footsteps seemingly a long way off.  I heard the wind in the rose-bush outside.  Some one walked down the stony court.  Then a shrill neigh of a horse pierced the silence.  A rider was mounting out there for some reason.  With my life at stake I grasped all the sweetness of that situation.  Sally stirred in my arms, raised a red, tear-stained yet happy face, and tried to smile.  “It isn’t any time to cry,” she whispered.  “But I had to.  You can’t understand what it made me feel to learn you’re no drunkard, no desperado, but a man—­a man like that Ranger!” Very sweetly and seriously she kissed me again.  “Russ, if I didn’t honestly and truly love you before, I do now.”

Then she stood up and faced me with the fire and intelligence of a woman in her eyes.  “Tell me now.  You were spying on my uncle?”

Briefly I told her what had happened before I entered her room, not omitting a terse word as to the character of the men I had watched.

“My God!  So it’s Uncle Roger!  I knew something was very wrong here—­with him, with the place, the people.  And right off I hated George Wright.  Russ, does Diane know?”

“She knows something.  I haven’t any idea how much.”

“This explains her appeal to Steele.  Oh, it’ll kill her!  You don’t know how proud, how good Diane is.  Oh, it’ll kill her!”

“Sally, she’s no baby.  She’s got sand, that girl—­”

The sound of soft steps somewhere near distracted my attention, reminded me of my peril, and now, what counted more with me, made clear the probability of being discovered in Sally’s room.  “I’ll have to get out of here,” I whispered.