He leaned forward, idly drumming on the polished desk, and regarded her with a sort of impersonal speculation. A little smile crept to his lip.

"The whirligig of time does bring in its revenges, doesn't it?" he mused aloud. Mary Virginia's lips curled.

"I do not follow you," she said coldly. "I am not even sure you have the letters--that is why I am here. I must see them with my own eyes before I agree to pay for them. That is what you expect me to do, is it not?"

"Oh, I have them all right--that is very easily proven," said he, unruffled. "Now listen carefully, please, while I explain the real reason for your presence here this afternoon. Mr. Inglesby, for reasons of his own, desires to don the senatorial toga; why not? Also, even more vehemently, Mr. Inglesby desires to lead to the altar Miss Mary Virginia Eustis: yourself, dear lady, your charming self: again, why not? Who can blame him for so natural and laudable an ambition?

"As to his ever persuading you to become Mrs. Inglesby, without some--ah--moral suasion, why, you know what his chance would be better than I do. As to his persuading the state to send him to Washington, it would have been a certainty, a sure thing, if our zealous young friend Mayne hadn't egged your father into the game. How Mayne managed that, heaven knows, particularly with your father's affairs in the condition they are. Now, Eustis is a fine man. Far too fine to be lost in the shuffle at Washington, where he'd be a condemned nuisance--just as he sometimes is here at home. Do you begin to comprehend?"

"Why, no," said she, blankly. "And I certainly fail to see where my silly letters--"

"Let me make it plainer. You and your silly letters put the game into Mr. Inglesby's hands, swing the balance in his favor. _You_ pay _me_?

Heavens, no! _We_ pay _you_--and a thumping price at that!"

For a long moment they looked at each other.

"My dear Miss Eustis," he put the tips of his fine fingers together, bent forward over them, and favored her with a white-toothed smile, "behold in me Mr. Inglesby's amba.s.sador--the advocate of Cupid. Plainly, I am authorized to offer you Mr. Inglesby's heart, his hand, and--his check-book. Let us suppose you agree to accept--no, don't interrupt me yet, please. And keep your seat, Miss Eustis. You may smile, but I would advise you to consider very seriously what I am about to say to you, and to realize once for all that Mr. Inglesby is in dead earnest and prepared to go to considerable lengths. Well, then, as I was about to say: suppose you agree to accept his proposal! Being above all things a business man, Mr. Inglesby realizes that gilt-edged collateral should be put up for what you have to offer--youth, beauty, charm, health, culture, family name, desirable and influential connections, social position of the highest. In exchange he offers the Inglesby millions, his absolute devotion to yourself, and his hearty support to all your father's plans and interests. Observe the last, please; it is highly important. Besides this, Mayne and Eustis want reform, progress, Demos-with-a-full-dinner-pail, all the wearisome rest of that uplift stuff? Inglesby will see that they get an undiluted dose of it. More yet: if you have any scruples about Mayne, Inglesby will get behind that young man and boost him until he can crow on the weathervane--when you are Mrs. Inglesby. A chap like Mayne would be valuable, properly expurgated. Come, Miss Eustis, that's fair enough. If you refuse--well, it's up to you to make Eustis understand that he must eliminate himself from politics--and look out for himself," he finished ominously.

Mary Virginia rose impetuously.

"I am no longer seventeen, Mr. Hunter. What, do you honestly think you can frighten a grown woman into believing that a handful of silly letters could possibly be worth all that? Well, you can't. And--let me remind you that blackmailing women isn't smiled upon in Carolina. A hint of this and you'd be ostracized."

"So would you. And why use such an extreme term as blackmailing for what really is a very fair offer?" said he, equably. "The letters are not the only arrows in my quiver, Miss Eustis. But as you are more interested in them than anything else just now, suppose we run over a few, just to remind you of their amazing nature?" He rose leisurely, opened the safe in a corner of the room, took from the steel money-vault a package, and Mary Virginia recognized her own writing.

Always keeping them under his own hand, he yet allowed her to lean forward and verify what he chose to read.

Her face burned and tears of mortification stung her eyes. Good heavens, had she been as silly and as sentimental as all that? But as she listened to his smooth remorseless voice, mortification merged into amazement and amazement into consternation. Older and wiser now, she saw what ignorance and infatuation had really accomplished, and she realized that a fool can unwittingly pull the universe about her ears.

She was appalled. It was as if her waking self were confronted by an incredible something her dreaming self had done. She knew enough of the world now to realize how such letters would be received--with smiles intended to wound, with the raised eyebrow, the shrugged shoulder. She wondered, with a chill of panic, how she could ever hope to make anybody understand what she admitted she herself couldn't explain. For heaven's sake, _what_ had she been trying to tell this man? She didn't know any more, except that it hadn't been what these letters seemed to reveal.

"Well?" said the lazy, pleasant voice, "don't you agree with me that it would have been barbarous to destroy them? Wonderful, aren't they?

Who would credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme art?

A French court lady might have written them, in a day when folks made a fine art of love and weren't afraid nor ashamed."

"I must have been stark mad!" said she, twisting her fingers. "How could I ever have done it? Oh, how?"

"Oh, we all have our moments of genius!" said he, airily.

As he faced her, smiling and urbane, she noted woman-fashion the superfine quality of his linen, the perfection of every detail of his appearance, the grace with which he wore his clothes. His manner was gracious, even courtly. Yet there was about him something so relentless that for the first time she felt a quiver of fear.

"If my father--or Mr. Mayne--knew this, you would undoubtedly be shot!" said she, and her eyes flashed.

"Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot? I am well aware that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely woman is concerned," he admitted, with a faint sneer. "But when one plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks. Granted I do get shot? That wouldn't give you the letters: it would simply hand them over to prosecuting attorneys and the public press, and they'd be d.a.m.ning with blood upon them. No, I don't think there'll be any fireworks--just a sensible deal, in which everybody benefits and n.o.body loses."

"The thing is impossible, perfectly impossible."

"I don't see why. Everything has its price and I'm offering you a pretty stiff one."

"I would rather be burned alive. Marry Mr. Inglesby? _I_? Why, he is impossible, perfectly impossible!"

"He is nothing of the kind. And he is very much in love with you--you amount to a grand pa.s.sion with Inglesby. Also, he has twenty millions." He added dryly: "You are hard to please."

Mary Virginia waved aside grand pa.s.sion and twenty millions with a gesture of ineffable disdain.

"Even if I were weak and silly enough to take you seriously, do you imagine my father would ever consent? He would despise me. He would rather see me dead."

"Oh, no, he wouldn't. n.o.body can afford to despise a woman with twenty millions. It isn't in human nature. Particularly when you save Mr.

James Eustis himself from coming a breakneck cropper, to say the very least."

For the moment she missed the significance of that last remark.

"I repeat that I would rather be burned alive. I despise the man!"

said she, pa.s.sionately.

"Oh, no, you wouldn't." His manner was a bit contemptuous. "And you'd soon get used to him. Women and cats are like that. They may squall and scratch a bit at first, but the saucer of cream reconciles them, and presently they are quite at home and purring, the sensible creatures! You'll end by liking him very well."

The girl ignored this Job's comforting.

"What shall I say to my father?" she asked directly. "Tell him you kept the foolish letters written you by an ignorant child--and the price is either his or my selling out to Mr. Inglesby?"

"That is your lookout. You can't expect us to let your side whip us, hands down, can you? Mr. Inglesby does not propose to submit tamely to _everything_." His face hardened, a glacial glint snapped into his eyes. "Inglesby's no worse than anybody else would be that had to hold down his job. He's got virtues, plenty of solid good-citizen, church-member, father-of-a-family virtues, little as you seem to realize it. Also, let me repeat--he has twenty millions. To buy up a handful of letters for twenty million dollars looks to me about the biggest price ever paid since the world began. Don't be a fool!"

"I refuse. I refuse absolutely and unconditionally. I shall immediately send for my father--and for Mr. Mayne--"

"I give you credit for better sense," said he, with a razor-edged smile. "Eustis is honorable and Mayne is in love with you, and when you spring this they'll swear they believe you: _but will they_? Do men ever believe women, without the leaven of a little doubt? Speaking as a man for men, I wouldn't put them to the test. No, dear lady, I hardly think you are going to be so silly. Now let us pa.s.s on to something of greater moment than the letters. Did you think I had nothing else to urge upon you?"

"What, more?" said she, derisively. "I don't think I understand."

"I am sure you don't. Permit me, then, to enlighten you." He paused a moment, as if to reflect. Then, impressively:

"Hitherto, Miss Eustis, you have had the very b.u.t.ton on Fortune's cap," he told her. "Suppose, however, that fickle G.o.ddess chose to whisk herself off bodily, and left you--_you_, mind you! to face the ugly realities of poverty, and poverty under a cloud?" And while she stared at him blankly, he asked: "What do you know of your father's affairs?"

As a matter of fact she knew very little. But something in the deadly pleasantness of his voice, something in his eyes, startled her.

"What do you mean, Mr. Hunter?"

"Ah, now we get down to bedrock: your father's affairs," he said evenly.

"Your father, Miss Eustis, is a very remarkable man, a man with one idea. In other words, a fanatic. Only a fanatic could accomplish what Eustis has accomplished. His one idea is the very sound old idea that people should remain on the land. He starts in to show his people how to do it successfully. Once started, the work grows like Jonah's gourd. He becomes a sort of rural white hope. So far, so good. But reclamation work, experimenting, blooded stock, up-to-the-minute machinery, labor-saving devices, chemicals, high-priced experts, labor itself, all that calls for money, plenty of money. Your father's work grew to its monumental proportions because he'd gotten other men interested in it--all sorts and conditions of men, but chiefly--and here's at once his strength and weakness--farmers, planters, small-town merchants and bankers. They backed him with everything they had--and they haven't lost--yet.

"However, there are such things as bad seasons, labor troubles, boll-weevil, canker, floods, war. He lost ship-loads of cotton. He lost heavily on rice. Remember those last floods? In some of his places they wiped the work of years clean off the map. He had to begin all over, and he had to do it on borrowed money; which in lean and losing years is expensive. Floods may come and crops may go, but interest on borrowed money goes on forever. He mortgaged all he could mortgage, risked everything he could risk, took every chance--and now everything is at stake with him.

"Do you realize what it would mean if Eustis went under? A smash to shake the state! Consider, too, the effect of failure upon the man himself! He can't fail, though--_if Mr. Inglesby chooses to lend a hand_. Now do you begin to comprehend?"

In spite of her distrust, he impressed her profoundly. He did not over-estimate her father's pa.s.sionate belief in himself and the value of his work. If anything, Hunter had slurred the immense influence Eustis exerted, and the calamitous effect his failure would have upon the plain people who looked up to him with such unlimited trust. They would not only lose their money; they would lose something no money could pay for--their faith.

"Oh, but that just simply couldn't happen!" said Mary Virginia, and her chin went up.

"It could very easily happen. It may happen shortly," he contradicted politely. "Heavens, girl, don't you know that the Eustis house is mortgaged to the roof, that Rosemount Plantation is mortgaged from the front fences to the back ditches? No, I suppose he wouldn't want his women-folks to know. He thinks he can tide it over. They always believe they can tide it over, those one-idea chaps. And he could, too, for he's a born winner, is Eustis. Give him time and a good season and he'd be up again, stronger than ever." While he spoke he was taking from a drawer a handful of papers, which he spread out on the desk. She could see upon all of them a bold clear "_James Eustis_."

"One place mortgaged to prop up another, and that in turn mortgaged to save a third. Like links in a chain. Any chain is only as strong as its weakest link, remember. And we've got the links. Look at these, please." He laid before her two or three slips of paper. Mary Virginia's eyes asked for enlightenment.