"Will any explanation alter the facts? Are you not a liar and a cheat? You gave me a false name to spy out the land."
"Am I the only one that gave a wrong name?" he asked.
"That is different," she flamed. "You had made a mistake and, half in sport, I encouraged you in it. But you seem to have found out my real name since. Yet you still accepted what I had to offer, under a false name, under false pretenses. You questioned me about the grants. You have lived a lie from first to last."
"It ain't as bad as you say, ma'am. Don Manuel had told me it wasn't safe to come here in my own name. I didn't care about the safety, but I wanted to see the situation exactly as it was. I didn't know who you were when I came here. I took you to be Miss Maria Yuste. I——"
"My name is Maria Yuste Valencia Valdés," the young woman explained proudly. "When, may I ask, did you discover who I was?"
"I guessed it at Antelope Springs."
"Then why did you not tell me then who you are? Surely that was the time to tell me. My deception did you no harm; yours was one no man of honor could have endured after he knew who I was."
"I didn't aim to keep it up very long. I meant, in a day or two——"
"A day or two," she cried, in a blaze of scorn. "After you had found out all I had to tell; after you had got evidence to back your robber-claim; after you had made me breathe the same air so long with a spy?"
Her face was very white; but she faced him in her erect slimness, with her dark eyes fixed steadily on him.