"Listen--they are coming."

Angelo got out then and clambered in beside her, and they both peered into the darkness whence footsteps came. The two were walking slowly, Hiltze leading the girl carefully. She walked shrinkingly, her face showing deathly pale in the shadowy night.

Eveley got out at once and went to meet them, surprised at the great wave of tenderness sweeping over her. She felt somehow that it was a daughter of hers, coming back to her out of suffering and sorrow. She put her arms protectingly about the girl, and kissed her cheek.

"Marie," she said softly, "you are going to be my sister. I--I think I love you already. I felt it when I saw you come out of the darkness."

The girl did not speak, but her slender fingers closed convulsively about Eveley's, and there was a catch like a little sob in her throat.

Eveley herself helped her into the car, and pulled the rugs and blankets about her.

"It is very foggy, and the air is cold. We do not want a little sick girl on our hands. Pull them close about you. Oh, your cape is very light--you must take my furs. It is much warmer in front, and I do not need them.

Now, are you all ready? This is my little pal Angelo Moreno with me, but don't pay any attention to him to-night. You will see him again. Now, all ready and off we go."

Angelo sat silently musing in his corner during the long ride back to town, and Eveley sang softly almost beneath her breath. In the back seat there was silence, too. Only once Eveley turned to call to them blithely:

"I was frightened and anxious at first, but now I feel happy and full of hope. I think you are going to bring me great good fortune, Sister Marie."

"You are--most heavenly kind," said Marie, in slow soft English, with the exquisite toning of her Spanish tongue.

"Oh, Marie," cried Eveley rapturously. "Those are the first words I ever heard you say--such kind and loving words. I shall never forget them."

The rest of the ride was taken in absolute silence, and at the door of her cottage when she ran the car into the garage, Angelo carried Marie's bag up the steps silently, and Hiltze helped her, while Eveley ran hospitably in front to have the window open and the lights on. She thrust out an eager hand to help Marie through the window, and then she gaily faced their escorts.

"Not to-night," she cried. "You can not come in even for a minute. Sister Marie and I are going to have hot chocolate all by ourselves, and--and find out how we like each other's looks. Many thanks--good night."

Then she closed the window and turned to the slender shrinking figure at her side, drawing back the heavy hood that shielded the girl's face to look into the features of the little foreign waif she had taken to her heart.

CHAPTER XIV

NEW LIGHT ON LOYALTY

A quick thrill of pleasure swept over Eveley as she looked into the face of her young guest.

"Duty?" No, it would be a joy to teach this soft and lovely creature the glorious principles of freedom, justice and equality. This was Eveley's sphere--she felt it--she knew it. She took Marie's slender hands in both of hers, and squeezed them rapturously.

"Oh, I am so happy," she cried ecstatically. "I think you are adorable."

For Marie's soft dark eyes, the soft waves of dark hair drooping over the low forehead, the slender oval of the olive tinted face, the crimson curving lips, the shrinking figure presented such a picture of exquisite helplessness that Eveley's brave and buoyant soul rose leaping to the appeal.

She removed the dark cape from Marie's shoulders, and took her bag, leading her into the small east bedroom which had been so charmingly dressed for her.

"This is your home now, Marie, I hope for a long, long time. It is your home, and you are as free as a bird. You are not my servant, but my sister and my friend. I want you to be happy. You are to think as you like, do as you like, go or stay as you like. You are mistress of your own life, now and all the time."

"It is very lovely," said Marie softly. "And you are an angel from Heaven."

"Not a bit of it," laughed Eveley. "You do not know me. I am the humanest thing you ever saw in your life." She lifted Marie's bag lightly to a low table. "Now, this door opens to the bath--my bedroom door leads into it from the opposite side. And this is your closet, and these drawers are all empty, so use them as you wish. Why don't you put on a negligee, now, and rest? And while you are alone for a minute, to collect yourself and unpack your bag, I shall run out and put on the chocolate. We must have a hot luncheon after our cold ride. Are you very cold? I think I'd better light the fire in your grate--it is all ready. There, that is better now.

If I ever do get married I must certainly have wonderful luck, if there is any faith in signs, for I do build the fieriest fires. Now, do not hurry, I'll come back in a few minutes. I think I shall put on a negligee too," she added, as Marie drew a silk gown from her bag. "And then we'll be surely settled down and right at home together."

With a warm and dazzling smile, she ran out to put the chocolate on the grill, and arrange the sandwiches and fruit and cake on the table around the bowl of drooping roses, and then, humming blithely, hurried into her own room to change from her heavy dress to a soft house gown.

When, a few moments later, she returned to Marie, she found her standing pensively in the center of the room, the heavy folds of a dark red gown falling about her graceful figure, her head sunk on her breast in reverie. Eveley put her arms around her tenderly.

"You are beautiful," she said. "Don't worry, dear. You are going to be very happy, even yet. Just trust me--and--do you know the song of the Belgian girl--Well, we shall make an American Beauty of you, sure enough.

Just try to be happy, and have confidence in me, Marie. I shall never go back on you. My, how quick you were! Your bag is all unpacked, isn't it?"

She glanced with quickly appraising eyes at the heavy silver articles of toilet laid out on the dressing-table, and at the gowns swinging from the pole in the closet.

"Come along, baby sister," she said affectionately, "or the chocolate will run all over the grill."

There was deep if unvoiced appreciation in Marie's eyes as she observed the fine heavy furniture of the little dining-room, the lace doilies on the mahogany table, the fine pieces of china, and the drooping roses.

Eveley led her gaily to her place at the table, and sat down beside her.

"We really ought to ask a blessing," she said. "I feel such a fountain of grat.i.tude inside of me. My own sister was ten years older than I, and there were no babies afterward for me to make a fuss over. This is a brand-new experience, and I am just bubbling over."

"But I am no baby," said Marie, smiling the wistful smile that suggested tears and heartaches. "I think I am quite as old as you."

"Oh, impossible," gasped Eveley. "Why, I am twenty-five years old."

"Really!" mocked Marie, and she laughed--and Eveley realized it was the first time Marie had laughed. "Well, I am twenty-three and a half."

"Oh, you can't be. Mr. Hiltze said you were a child, and you are so little and slim and young."

"You have been a woman, living a woman's life, with all a woman's interests. But our women are sheltered, kept away from life, and that is why I am like a child in facing the world--because I have never faced it.

I look young, and act young, because--well, with us, our women marry early. If they do not, they must retain the charm of youth until they do.

That is what we are taught, it is our business as women to be young and lovely until we marry."

"I love to hear you talk," said Eveley irrelevantly. "You are just like a chapter out of a new and thrilling story--See, I have let my chocolate grow cold just looking at you, and listening. I am very glad you are nearly as old as I--we can not only be sisters, but twins if you like."

Marie sipped her chocolate, daintily, dreamily. Then she looked at Eveley searchingly.

"Is this your patriotism?" she asked at last. "To throw open your home on a moment's notice, to a stranger from a strange land?"

"We call it Americanization," said Eveley. "We call it the a.s.similation of--of--" She hesitated, not wishing to speak of "flotsam and jetsam" to this soft and pliant creature. "We call it the a.s.similation of the whole world into American ideals."

"Then," said Marie slowly, dark eyes still searching Eveley's face, "I suppose, having this vision of patriotism yourself, you can understand patriotism of others from other lands? You can understand why people plot, and steal, and kill--for love of country? My own land, for instance--so many call us b.l.o.o.d.y butchers because we fight for our country and for freedom. But you--you know what patriotism is. And you can understand, can you not?"

"Of course I understand," said Eveley rather confusedly, for the Mexican business was a terrible muddle to her. "I understand that your men must fight to save their country from the rebels and anarchists who would wreck and ruin her."

"Yes, but--it is the rebels and anarchists who would save her," said Marie, with childish earnestness. "I--we--I am of the revolutionists. My father was killed. My brothers were killed. My sisters were made captive.

But still the struggle goes on. The best of our men must fight and die.

Poor Mexico must struggle and blunder on from one disaster to another, until at last she rises triumphant and free among the nations of the world. It is those in power in her own land from whom Mexico has most to fear--those who would sell her, body and soul, land and loyalty, to foreign devils for gold. It is not against the outside world we fight--it is the vile, the treacherous ones inside our borders."

"But how can you tell who is for, and who against?" asked Eveley bewildered. "They all promise so much--and peace is a.s.sured--but there is no peace. And who can tell where freedom really lies?"

"Alas, it is true," said Marie sadly. "But those with eyes that see and hearts that love, know that Mexico is still in the hands of traitors, and that the spirit of revolution must live."