“A strong girl like her ought not to be so affected by a scare,” he said. “I don’t understand it. She seems to have lost her grip and makes no effort to get hold of it, and then the weather is against her.” It was very hot those July days, hotter and dryer than it had been in the valley for years, and Fanny began at last to droop in the heat and confinement. They sent to Stockton for a nurse and this relieved Fanny from her constant watch in the sick room, where Inez lay a part of the time half unconscious of what was passing around her and talking very low to herself. Once Fanny thought she caught the word _Ridgefield_ and wondered how Inez knew anything of that place. “I mean to ask Mr. Rayborne,” she thought, and went to find him. The sun was setting and a cool breeze was blowing down from the mountains and she stepped out upon the piazza for a moment to enjoy it. While there she heard Mr. Rayborne and Tom enter the sitting room from the kitchen. They were talking of her, and Tom’s voice was rather loud as he said, “I think it a shame that for the whim of a proud woman you cannot tell her that you are her father and Inez her half sister! Do you think she would be ashamed of you? She is not that kind.” For a moment Fanny felt as if she, too, had heart disease. She could not move and there was a prickly sensation in her hands and feet. Then she recovered herself, and in a moment was confronting Mr. Rayborne with the question, “Are you Mark Hilton, and is Inez my half sister?” Mark could not reply, but Tom did it for him. “I am bound by no promise,” he said, “and will tell you the truth. He _is_ Mark Hilton, your father, if Helen Tracy is your mother. He was not killed in the mines, and Inez is your half sister. She knows it and your mother knows it, but would only permit you to come here on the condition that you were kept in ignorance of the relationship. I am hampered by no conditions. I have told you and it may save Inez’s life.” Tom had freed his mind and walked from the room, leaving father and daughter alone. Mark waited for Fanny to speak first, but she could not. The prickly sensation had returned. Her tongue felt thick and her hands cold and stiff. She had thought so much of her own father since she heard of him, and had pictured him often in her mind as the Apollo her mother had described. She had regretted that she could not remember him, and now he was here before her, and was not at all like her idea of him, nor at all like Judge Prescott, nor Roy, nor any man she had ever known socially. He was still fine looking, with the manners of a gentleman, but he was a miner,—a stage driver,—a guide,—with another name than his own. All this passed through her mind, and with it a thought of ’Tina. There was some proud blood of the Tracys in her veins, and for a second it asserted itself strongly. Then, with a long breath, like one shaking off a nightmare, she went forward and said, “If you are my father,—kiss me!”