They were shadowing with the old wistful light, hut they were as clear as the limpid water of the spring. They were earnest, solemn in unutterable love and faith and abnegation. Venters shivered. He knew he was looking into her soul. He knew she could not lie in that moment; but that she might tell the truth, looking at him with those eyes, almost killed his belief in purity.
"What are--what were you to--to Oldring?" he panted, fiercely.
"I am his daughter," she replied, instantly.
Venters slowly let go of her. There was a violent break in the force of his feeling--then creeping blankness.
"What--was it--you said?" he asked, in a kind of dull wonder.
"I am his daughter."
"Oldring's daughter?" queried Venters, with life gathering in his voice.
"Yes."
With a passionately awakening start he grasped her hands and drew her close.
"All the time--you've been Oldring's daughter?"
"Yes, of course all the time--always."
"But Bess, you told me--you let me think--I made out you were--a--so--so ashamed."
"It is my shame," she said, with voice deep and full, and now the scarlet fired her cheek. "I told you--I'm nothing--nameless--just Bess, Oldring's girl!"
"I know--I remember. But I never thought--" he went on, hurriedly, huskily. "That time--when you lay dying--you prayed--you--somehow I got the idea you were bad."
"Bad?" she asked, with a little laugh.
She looked up with a faint smile of bewilderment and the absolute unconsciousness of a child. Venters gasped in the gathering might of the truth. She did not understand his meaning.
"Bess! Bess!" He clasped her in his arms, hiding her eyes against his breast. She must not see his face in that moment. And he held her while he looked out across the valley. In his dim and blinded sight, in the blur of golden light and moving mist, he saw Oldring. She was the rustler's nameless daughter. Oldring had loved her. He had so guarded her, so kept her from women and men and knowledge of life that her mind was as a child's. That was part of the secret--part of the mystery. That was the wonderful truth. Not only was she not bad, but good, pure, innocent above all innocence in the world--the innocence of lonely girlhood.
He saw Oldring's magnificent eyes, inquisitive, searching, softening. He saw them flare in amaze, in gladness, with love, then suddenly strain in terrible effort of will. He heard Oldring whisper and saw him sway like a log and fall. Then a million bellowing, thundering voices--gunshots of conscience, thunderbolts of remorse--dinned horribly in his ears. He had killed Bess's father. Then a rushing wind filled his ears like a moan of wind in the cliffs, a knell indeed--Oldring's knell.
He dropped to his knees and hid his face against Bess, and grasped her with the hands of a drowning man.
"My God!...My God!...Oh, Bess!...Forgive me! Never mind what I've done--what I've thought. But forgive me. I'll give you my life.
I'll live for you. I'll love you. Oh, I do love you as no man ever loved a woman. I want you to know--to remember that I fought a fight for you--however blind I was. I thought--I thought--never mind what I thought--but I loved you--I asked you to marry me.
Let that--let me have that to hug to my heart. Oh, Bess, I was driven! And I might have known! I could not rest nor sleep till I had this mystery solved. God! how things work out!"
"Bern, you're weak--trembling--you talk wildly," cried Bess.
"You've overdone your strength. There's nothing to forgive.
There's no mystery except your love for me. You have come back to me!"
And she clasped his head tenderly in her arms and pressed it closely to her throbbing breast.