"Was that woman's story true?" she said.
Brooke made a little gesture which implied that he attempted no defence.
"It was," he said.
A faint spark crept into Barbara's eyes, and a tinge of color into her cheek. "You know what you are admitting?"
"I am afraid I do."
Barbara Heathcote had a temper, and though she usually held it in check it swept her away just then.
"Then, though we only discovered it afterwards, you knew that Saxton was scheming against my brother-in-law, and bought up the timber-rights to extort money from him?"
Again Brooke made a little gesture, and the girl, who seemed stirred as he had scarcely believed her capable of being, straightened herself rigidly.
"And yet you crept into his house, and permitted us—it is very hard to say it—to make friends with you! Had you no sense of fitness? Can't you even speak?"
Brooke was too confused, and the girl too furious, for either of them to realize the significance of her anger, since the fact that she had merely permitted him to meet her as an acquaintance at the ranch scarcely seemed to warrant that almost passionate outbreak.