"I can
remember little more than that the Mayor asked me to forget from
that moment the whole occurrence. I did not know at the time how
completely I should fulfill his request. You must remember, Miss
Yerba, as your Lady Superior has, that I was absurdly young at the
time. I don't know but that I may have thought, in my youthful
inexperience, that this sort of thing was of common occurrence.
And then, I had my own future to make--and youth is brutally
selfish. I was quite friendless and unknown when I left San
Francisco for the mines, at the time you entered the convent as
Yerba Buena."
She smiled, and made a slight impulsive gesture, as if she would
have drawn nearer to him, but checked herself, still smiling, and
without embarrassment. It may have been a movement of youthful
camaraderie, and that occasional maternal rather than sisterly
instinct which sometimes influences a young girl's masculine
friendship, and elevates the favored friend to the plane of the
doll she has outgrown. As he turned towards her, however, she
rose, shook out her yellow dress, and said with pretty petulance:--
"Then you must go so soon--and this your first and last visit as my
guardian?"
"No one could regret that more than I," looking at her with
undefined meaning.
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