"Your broken leg," interrupted Ashton--"it made me forget. You had saved me with the rope. I had to help you. Now I see how foolish I have been. I should have left you to lie here, and flung myself back over into the water."
"Why! You ask why?" cried Ashton, his eyes ablaze with excitement, his whole body quivering. "Can't you see? Are you blind? What do I care about myself if I can save her from you? I shall not try to escape. You shall never go up there to work her harm!"
"Harm her? You mean put through this irrigation project?"
"No!" shouted Ashton. "Don't lie and pretend, you hypocrite! You know what I mean! You know she could not hide how you were enticing her!"
Blake stared in utter astonishment. Then, regardless of his leg, he sat up and said quietly: "I see. I thought you must have understood when she told me, there at the last moment before we started. She is my sister."
"Sister!" scoffed Ashton. "You liar! You have no sister. Your sisters died years ago. Genevieve told me."
"That was what I told her. I believed it true. But it was not true. Belle did not die--God! when I think of that! It has helped me through this fight--it helped me crawl up here with that leg dangling. Good God! To think of Jenny waiting for me up there, and Son, and little Belle too--little Belle whom all these years I thought dead!"
Ashton stood as if turned to stone. "Belle--you call her Belle? She told me--Chuckie only a nickname!" he stammered. "Adopted--her real name Isobel!"
"We always called her Belle--Baby Belle! She was the youngest," said Blake.
"I did not know. She did--she knew from the first, there at Stockchute. I see it now. Even before that, she must have guessed it. Yes, I see all now. She sent for me to come out here, because she thought I might be her brother."
"You did not tell me!" reproached Ashton, his face ghastly. "How was I to know?"
"I tell you, I did not know," repeated Blake. "At first--yes, all along--there was something about her voice and face--But she had changed so much, and all these years--eight, nine years--I had thought her dead. She gave me no sign--only that friendliness. I did not know until the very last moment, there on the edge of the ravine. I thought you saw it; that you heard her tell me. It seemed to me everybody must have heard."