“I don’t hear,” said she.

He looked at her, his lips set, his eyes as inquiring as her own.

“I don’t believe it,” he muttered just above his breath.

The steady stare of her eyes never faltered.

“You loved sister, love me,” she whispered.

He fell back from her.  This was not Georgian.  This was the untutored girl about whom Georgian had written to him.  Everything proved it, even her hands upon which his eyes now fell.  Why had he not noticed them before?  He had meant to look at them the first thing.  Now that he did, he saw that he might have spared himself some of the miserable uncertainties of the last few minutes.  They were small and slight like Georgian’s, but very brown and only half cared for.  That they were cared for at all astonished him.  But she soon explained that.  Seeing where his eyes were fixed, she cried out: 

“Don’t look at my hands.  I know they are not real nice like sister’s.  But I’m learning.  She showed me how to rub them white and cut the nails.  A woman did it for me the first time and I’ve been doing it ever since, but they don’t look like hers, for all the pretty rings she bought me.  Was I foolish to want the rings?  I always had rings when I was with the gipsies.  They were not gold ones, but I liked them.  And Mother Duda liked rings too and made me one once out of beads.  It was on my finger when my sister took me home with her.  That is why she brought me these.  She didn’t think the bead one was good enough.  It wasn’t much like hers.”

Ransom recalled the diamonds and the rich sapphires he had been accustomed to see on his bride’s hand.

But this did not engage him long.  Some method of communication must be found with this girl, which could be both definite and unmistakable.  Feeling in his pocket, he brought out pencil and a small pad.  He would write what he had to say, and was hesitating over the words with which to open this communication, when he saw her hand thrust itself between his eyes and the pad, and heard these words uttered in a resolute tone, but not without a hint of sadness: 

“I cannot read.  I have never been taught.”

PART III

Money

CHAPTER XVIII

GOD’S FOREST, THEN MAN’S

The pencil and pad fell from Mr. Ransom’s hands.  He stared at the girl who had made this astonishing statement, and his brain whirled.

As for her, she simply stooped and picked up the pad.

“You feel badly about that,” said she.  “You want me to read.  I’ll learn.  That will make me more like sister.  But I know some things now.  I know what you are thinking about.  You are curious about my life, what it has been and what kind of a girl I am.  I’ll tell you.  I can talk if I cannot hear.  I heard up to two years ago.  Shall I talk now?  Shall I tell you what I told Georgian when she found me crying in the street and took me home to her house?”