"Would you consider yourself warranted in scheming to extort money from any one?"
Brooke did not look at her. "It would, of course, depend—upon, for example, any right I might consider I had to the money. We will suppose that somebody had robbed me——"
"Then one who has been robbed may steal?"
Brooke made a little deprecatory gesture while the blood crept to his face. "I'm afraid I have never given any questions of this kind much consideration. We were discussing the country."
Barbara laughed. "Of course. I ought to have remembered. You are so horribly afraid of betraying your sentiments in England that you would almost prefer folks to believe you hadn't any. I am, however, going to venture on dangerous ground again. I think the country is having an effect on you. You have changed considerably since I met you at the ranch."
"It is possible," and Brooke met her gaze with a little smile in his eyes. "Still, I am not quite sure it was altogether the fault of the country."
Barbara looked down at the cañon. "Isn't that a little ambiguous?"
"Well," said Brooke, reflectively, "it is, at least, rather a stretching of the simile, but I saw you first clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, in the midst of a frothing river—and I am not quite sure that you were right when you said it was not a sword you brought me."
Barbara flashed a swift, keen glance at him, though she smiled. "Then beware in what quarrel you draw it—if I did. One would expect such a gift to be used with honor. It could, however, be legitimately employed against timber-righters, claim-jumpers, and all schemers and extortioners of that kind."
She stopped a moment, and looked at him, steadily now. "Do you know that I am glad you left the ranch?"