"You've come out here to spy on me! Isn't that it? You've come to help me, you said, and yet you wouldn't even let me know you were here? Isn't it the same old game? Isn't it?"
She did not answer.
"Isn't it a fact that you've been waiting to see what I'd do when I got well? I suppose you've come out here to-day with a prayer-book and a lot of soft words, a lot of cant, to try to reform me?" He thrust his face close to hers as he asked the last.
"Is this the way you're going to greet me?" she asked. "Haven't you anything but the same old suspicion, the same old denunciation for me?"
He looked away from her and shrugged his shoulders.
"How have you known about me when you haven't been to see me?" he asked, evasively.
"Mr. Bayard has kept me informed."
He looked at her through a moment of silence, and she looked back as steadily, as intently as he.
"Bayard?" he asked. "Bayard? He's been telling you ... about me?"
"He's been as kind to me as he has to you, Ned,"—with a feeling of misgiving even as she uttered the words. "He has ... ridden to Yavapai many times just to tell me about you."