"
Elizabeth surrendered her pistols with hesitation. She felt that she must
obey her grandmother, but was not altogether certain whether it was safe
for her to be weaponless until she was sure this was friendly ground.
At the demand she began back as far as she could remember, and told the
story of her life, pathetically, simply, without a single claim to pity,
yet so earnestly and vividly that the grandmother, lying with her eyes
closed, forgot herself completely, and let the tears trickle unbidden and
unheeded down her well-preserved cheeks.
When Elizabeth came to the graves in the moonlight, she gasped, and
sobbed: "O, Johnny, Johnny, my little Johnny! Why did you always be such a
bad, bad boy?" and when the ride in the desert was described, and the man
from whom she fled, the grandmother held her breath, and said, "O, how
fearful!" Her interest in the girl was growing, and kept at white heat
during the whole of the story.
There was one part of her experience, however, that Elizabeth passed over
lightly, and that was the meeting with George Trescott Benedict.
Instinctively she felt that this experience would not find a sympathetic
listener. She passed it over by merely saying that she had met a kind
gentleman from the East who was lost, and that they had ridden together
for a few miles until they reached a town; and he had telegraphed to his
friends, and gone on his way. She said nothing about the money he had lent
to her, for she shrank from speaking about him more than was necessary.
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