Her emotion was emphatically wrathful. Without cause--that she could see--these city relatives had maligned her--had maligned her father's memory--and had cruelly shown her, a stranger, how they thoroughly hated her presence. She had come away from Sunset Ranch with two well-devised ideas in her mind. First of all, she hoped to clear her father's name of that old smirch upon it. Secondly, he had wished her to live with her relatives if possible, that she might become used to the refinements and circumstances of a more civilized life. Refinements! Why, these cousins of hers hadn't the decencies of red Indians! On impulse Helen had taken the tone she had with them--had showed them in "that cowgirl" just what they had expected to find. She would be bluff and rude and ungrammatical and ill-bred. Perhaps the spirit in which Helen did this was not to be commended; but she had begun it on the impulse of the moment and she felt she must keep it up during her stay in the Starkweather house. How long that would be Helen was not prepared to say now. It was in her heart one moment not to unpack her trunk at all. She could go to a hotel--the best in New York, if she so desired. How amazed her cousins would be if they knew that she was at this moment carrying more than eight hundred dollars in cash on her person? And suppose they learned that she owned thousands upon thousands of acres of grazing land in her own right, on which roamed unnumbered cattle and horses? Suppose they found out that she had been schooled in a first-class institution in Denver--probably as well schooled as they themselves? What would they say? How would they feel should they suddenly make these discoveries? But, while she sat there and studied the problem out, Helen came to at least one determination: While she remained in the Starkweather house she would keep from her uncle and cousins the knowledge of these facts. She would not reveal her real character to them. She would continue to parade before them and before their friends the very rudeness and ignorance that they had expected her to betray. "They are ashamed of me--let them be ashamed," she said, to herself, bitterly. "They hate me--I'll give them no reason for loving me, I promise you! They think me a pauper--I'll _be_ a pauper. Until I get ready to leave here, at least. Then I can settle with Uncle Starkweather in one lump for all the expense to which he may be put for me. "I'll buy no nice dresses--or hats--or anything else. They sha'n't know I have a penny to spend. If they want to treat me like a poor relation, let them. I'll _be_ a poor relation. "I must learn the truth about poor dad's trouble," she told herself again. "Uncle Starkweather must know something about it. I want to question him. He may be able to help me. I may get on the track of that bookkeeper. And he can tell me, surely, where to find Fenwick Grimes, father's old partner.