"But this is criminal!" he declared. "Let me take you away from this place at once. I'll find some place where you can go—back to my mother's home in the East."
"No, it's all right now. I'm in no danger, and I can't leave this place. In fact I don't want to," said the girl, putting her hand on Lowell's arm.
"Do you mean to tell me that he treated you so fiendishly during the first few days, and then suddenly changed and became the most considerate of relatives?"
"I tell you I am being treated all right now. I merely told you what happened at first—part of the cruel things he said—because I couldn't keep it all to myself any longer. Besides, that Indian woman—poor little thing!—is on my mind all the time."
"Then you won't come away?"
"No—he needs me."
"Well, this beats anything I ever heard of—" began Lowell. Then he stopped after a glance at her face. She was deathly pale. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, and her hands trembled. It seemed to him that the school-girl he had brought to the ranch a few days before had become a woman through some great mental trial.
"Come and see, or hear, for yourself," said Helen.
Wonderingly, Lowell stepped into the ranch-house kitchen. Helen pointed to the living-room.
Through the partly open door, Lowell caught a glimpse of an aristocratic face, surmounted by gray hair. A white hand drummed on the arm of a library chair which contained pillows and blankets. From the room there came a voice that brought to Lowell a sharp and disagreeable memory of the cutting voice he had heard in false welcome to Helen Ervin a few days before. Only now there was querulous insistence in the voice—the insistence of the sick person who calls upon some one who has proved unfailing in the performance of the tasks of the sick-room.