"Plucky!" decided Mr. Haydon, "and stubborn;" but he kept those thoughts to himself, and said aloud: "My dear young lady, I am indeed pleased to see you so far recovered since my last visit. I presume you know who I am," and he looked at her in a smiling, confidential way.
"Yes, I know who you are. Your name is Haydon, and--there is a piece of your letter."
She picked up a fragment of paper that had fallen at her feet, and flung it out from her on the water. Mr. Haydon affected not to see the pettish act, but turned to his companion.
"Will you allow me, Miss Rivers, to introduce another member of our firm? This is Mr. Seldon. Seldon, this is the young girl I told you of."
"I knew it before you spoke," said the other man, who looked at her with a great deal of interest, and a great deal of kindness. "My child, I was your mother's friend long ago. Won't you let me be yours?"
She reached out her hand to him, and the quick tears came to her eyes. She trusted without question the earnest gray eyes of the speaker, and turned from her own uncle to the uncle of Max.
"My dear fellow, there is, of course, no way of thanking you sufficiently for your care of her; but I can only say I am mighty glad to know a man like you."
It was Mr. Seldon who said so, and Dan Overton looked embarrassed and deprecating under the praise he had to accept.
"It is all right for you to make a fuss over it, Seldon," he returned; "but you know, as well as you know dinner time, that you would have done no less if you had found a young girl anywhere without a home--and especially if you found her in an Indian camp."
"Did she give you any information as to how she came to be there?"
Overton looked at him good-naturedly, but shook his head.
"I can't give you any information about that," he answered. "If you want to know anything of her previous to meeting her here, she will have to tell you."
"But she won't. I can't understand it; for I can see no need of mystery. I knew her mother when she was a girl like 'Tana, and--"
"Yes, I did. So now, perhaps, you will understand why I take such an interest in her--why Mr. Haydon takes an interest in her. Simply because she is his niece."
"Oh, she is--is she? And he came here, found her dying, or next door to it, and never claimed her."