FAY
"No."
"For my sake?"
"I reckon. I can't understand, but I'll respect your feelin's."
"Because you—oh, because you love me ? . . . Eighteen years! You were that terrible Lassiter! And now—because you love me?"
"That's it, Jane."
"Oh, you'll make me love you! How can I help but love you? My heart must be stone. But—oh, Lassiter, wait, wait! Give me time. I'm not what I was. Once it was so easy to love. Now it's easy to hate. Wait! My faith in God—some God—still lives. By it I see happier times for you, poor passion-swayed wanderer! For me—a miserable, broken woman. I loved your sister Milly. I will love you. I can't have fallen so low—I can't be so abandoned by God—that I've no love left to give you. Wait! Let us forget Milly's sad life. Ah, I knew it as no one else on earth! There's one thing I shall tell you—if you are at my death-bed, but I can't speak now."
"I reckon I don't want to hear no more," said Lassiter.
Jane leaned against him, as if some pent-up force had rent its way out, she fell into a paroxysm of weeping. Lassiter held her in silent sympathy. By degrees she regained composure, and she was rising, sensible of being relieved of a weighty burden, when a sudden start on Lassiter's part alarmed her.
"I heard hosses—hosses with muffled hoofs!" he said; and he got up guardedly.
"Where's Fay?" asked Jane, hurriedly glancing round the shady knoll. The bright-haired child, who had appeared to be close all the time, was not in sight.
"Fay!" called Jane.
No answering shout of glee. No patter of flying feet. Jane saw Lassiter stiffen.
"Fay—oh—Fay!" Jane almost screamed.
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