Then she saw that his motives had been wholly unselfish--even quixotic, as it appeared to her--silly, she would have called it, if silliness had not seemed unlikely in him.

She had never met a man like him before.

She ran her fingers through her golden-brown hair nervously, caught at a flying bit of old ribbon at her waist, and said in French: "He is honest altogether, sir.

He did not steal, and he was not there when it happened." "I know that, my girl.

That is why I did it." She looked at him keenly.