But before they went he thanked Adela for her story, and bade good-by to her and her father. As he faced them in doing this, he noticed once more the baffling resemblance between Adela and Jessie, which their unlikeness in stature and general bearing rendered all the more peculiar; and the gray eyes of the Reefes troubled him by their enigmatic expression. The conviction was strong in his mind, that the cause of their silence was that they really had nothing more definite to tell him about their ancestry than what they had imparted. Yet he wished that they had not stopped at this point. Why did they have gray eyes? And yet, why should they not have them? Save for a slight bronze or coppery hue in their complexions, they were of the same European race that Lance and Jessie belonged to. Nevertheless, their eyes and their strange legend pursued and haunted him long after he and Jessie had cantered away from the herb-doctor's door. CHAPTER IX. LANCE AND SYLVESTER. So mingled and conflicting were the considerations in Lance's mind, on leaving the Reefes, that he was not sure he would want to see Adela again. But his mood soon changed; he was not able to evade the importance which she had assumed for him. "I hope you are satisfied now," said Jessie, as they rode homeward together. "No, I'm not," he answered. "I suspect myself of being very much _dis_satisfied." Somehow he did not dare to speak to her, as yet, of the theory he entertained, that Adela was a descendant of Gertrude Wylde. And how could he tell her that he thought they looked alike? But within a few days, so incessantly did the notion pursue him, that he was forced to make a limited confession of it. Jessie observed that he was preoccupied and thinking of something which he would not tell her. "Do let me know what it is that troubles you, Ned," she whispered to him, laying her arm gently around his neck one evening on the veranda, when she found him brooding there alone. Thereupon he made his disclosure, and was rewarded by a rather tumultuous dialogue, in which Jessie demonstrated clearly that she was not pleased with the idea which he presented. "But how can it be any other way, Jessie?" he demanded, reproachfully. "Everything leads up to this conclusion; and, surely, if Adela Reefe represents to-day the line of that poor girl, Gertrude, who would have been your own cousin if you had been living then, how can we be indifferent to the fact that the same blood is in your veins and hers?" "I won't have it so!" Jessie returned. "I don't care if it is. And, besides, she has Indian blood; that makes all the difference. It is no longer the same."