She managed to look at him innocently and to say carelessly as he had spoken: 

“I had a dance with him.  He didn’t say anything about leaving so soon.”  She even achieved a little laugh which sounded quite natural, ending, “He seemed rather put out that I did not receive him like an old friend!”

“You did not accuse him of having robbed you?”

“Not in so many words,” quietly.  “But I was certainly not polite to him!  For a little I thought that he was going to return your money to me.”

“Why?” Pollard asked sharply, and now she was sure of his readiness to suspect her of holding back something from him.

“He said,” she went on, her interest seeming chiefly for her bacon and eggs, “that he was returning something to me I had left at the cabin at Harte’s place.  I couldn’t think of anything but your money.”

“What was it?”

“A spur rowel.  It had been loose for several days, and dropped out in the cabin.  He brought it back to me.”

From this they passed on to speak of other incidents of the dance and of other people, but the girl saw that her uncle’s interest waned with the change of topic.  Then, her heart fluttering in spite of her, but her voice steady enough, Winifred said lightly: 

“I think I’ll go for a little ride after breakfast.  My horse needs the exercise, and,” she added laughingly, “so do I.”

“Good idea,” he returned, nodding his approval.  But then he asked which way she was riding, and finally volunteered to go with her, assuring her smilingly that he had nothing of importance to do, and adding gravely, that he would feel safer if she were not out alone in this rough country.

So he rode with her and after an hour of swift galloping out toward the mountains, for the most part in silence, they came back to the town.  Pollard left her at his own gate and rode back through the street, “to see a man.”  But he returned almost immediately and for the rest of the day did not leave the house.  It was a long day for the girl, filled with restlessness and a sense of being spied upon, of being watched almost every moment by her uncle.  And before the day was done, there had come with the other emotions a little thrill of positive, personal fear.

It was midafternoon.  The silence here at this far end of the street hung heavy and oppressive.  She had gone up and down stairs half a dozen aimless times, eager for something to do.  The long hours had been hers for reflection, and after weighing the hundred little incidents of these last few weeks, now there was no faintest shadow of a doubt that Henry Pollard was at least guilty of criminal complicity in a scheme to send an innocent man to the penitentiary if not to the gallows; she was more than half persuaded that Pollard was in some way seeking to shield himself by using Thornton as a scapegoat; she had got to the point where she began to wonder if Henry Pollard and Ben Broderick shared share and share alike both in the profits of these crimes and in their actual commission.