"
"I do," he answers huskily.
"On the cross," she sternly says, flashing before his startled eyes
a jewelled crucifix. "I will obey you--I swear it on this--as long
as you are true." She presses her ashy lips on the cross.
He kisses it. The promise is sealed.
In a few hours, Hortense Duval, from the deck of the swift Golden
Gate, sees the sunlight fall for the last time, in long years, on
San Francisco's sandy hills.
With peculiar adroitness, in defence of her past, for the sake of
her future position, she keeps her staterooms; only walking the
decks with her maid occasionally at night. No awkward travelling
pioneer must recognize her as the lost "Beauty of the El Dorado."
A mere pretence of illness is enough.
When safely out of the harbor of Colon, on the French steamer,
she is perfectly free. Her passage tickets, made out as Madame de
Santos, are her new credentials.
She has left her old life behind her. Keen and self-possessed, with
quiet dignity she queens it on the voyage. When the French coast is
reached, her perfect mastery of herself proves she has grown into
her new position.
Philip Hardin has whispered at the last, "I want you to get rid of
your maid in a few months.
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