"I know," said the colonel, "that within the last three months I have paid away my last cent to keep the mouth of an infernal scoundrel shut who KNOWS that you are her mother, and threatens to expose her to her friends. I know that I'm dying here of an old wound that I got when I shut the mouth of another hound who was ready to bark at her two years after you disappeared. I know that between you and her I've let my old nigger die of a broken heart, because I couldn't keep him to suffer with me, and I know that I'm here a pauper on the State. I know that, Kate, and when I say it I don't regret it. I've kept my word to YOU, and, by the Eternal, your daughter's worth it! For if there ever was a fair and peerless creature--it's your child!" "And she--a rich woman--unless she squandered the fortune I gave her--lets you lie here!" said the woman grimly. "She don't know it." "She SHOULD know it! Have you quarreled?" She was looking at him keenly. "She distrusts me, because she half suspects the secret, and I hadn't the heart to tell her all." "All? What does she know? What does this man know? What has been told her?" she said rapidly. "She only knows that the name she has taken she has no right to." "Right to? Why, it was written on the Trust--Yerba Buena." "No, not that. She thought it was a mistake. She took the name of Arguello." "What?" said Mrs. Argalls, suddenly grasping the invalid's wrist with both hands. "What name?" her eyes were startled from their rigid coldness, her lips were colorless. "Arguello! It was some foolish schoolgirl fancy which that hound helped to foster in her. Why--what's the matter, Kate?" The woman dropped the helpless man's wrist, then, with an effort, recovered herself sufficiently to rise, and, with an air of increased decorum, as if the spiritual character of their interview excluded worldly intrusion, adjusted the screen around his bed, so as partly to hide her own face and Pendleton's. Then, dropping into the chair beside him, she said, in her old voice, from which the burden of ten long years seemed to have been lifted,-- "Harry, what's that you're playing on me?" "I don't understand you," said Pendleton amazedly. "Do you mean to say you don't know it, and didn't tell her yourself?" she said curtly. "What? Tell her what?" he repeated impatiently. "That Arguello WAS her father!" "Her father?" He tried to struggle to his elbow again, but she laid her hand masterfully upon his shoulder and forced him back. "Her father!" he repeated hurriedly. "Jose Arguello! Great God!--are you sure?" Quietly and yet mechanically gathering the scattered tracts from the coverlet, and putting them back, one by one in her reticule, she closed it and her lips with a snap as she uttered--"Yes."