"These," explained Hunter, "are promissory notes. You will see that some of them are about due--and the amounts are considerable."

"Oh! And _he_ had to do that?"

"Of course. What else could he do? We kept a very close watch since we got the first inkling that things were not breaking right for him. Mr.

Inglesby's own interests are pretty extensive--and we set them to work. It wasn't hard to manage, after things began to shape: a word here, a hint there, an order somewhere else; and once or twice, of course, a bit of pressure was brought to bear, in obdurate instances.

But the man with money is always the man with the whip hand. Eustis got the help he had to have--and presently we got these. All perfectly legitimate, all in the course of the day's work.

"Now, promissory notes are dangerous instruments should a holder desire to use them dangerously. Mr. Inglesby could give Eustis an extension of time, or he could demand full payment and immediately foreclose. You see, it's entirely optional with Mr. Inglesby." And he leaned back in his chair, perfectly self-possessed, entirely at his ease, and waited for her to speak.

"You could do that--anybody could do that--to my father?" she was only half-convinced.

"I a.s.sure you we can send him under--with a lot of other men's money tied around his neck to keep him down."

"But even you would hesitate to do a thing like that!"

"All is fair," said Hunter, "in love and war."

"_Fair_?"

"Legitimate, then."

"But if he is in Mr. Inglesby's way and in his power at the same time, why not remove him in the ordinary course of business? Why drag in me and my letters?"

"Why? Because it's the letters that enable us to reach _you_. My dear girl, Mr. Inglesby doesn't really give a hang whether Eustis sinks or swims. He'd as lief back him as not, for in the long run it's good business to back a winner. But it's _you_ he's playing for, and on that count all is fish that comes to his net. _Now_ do you begin to see?"

Mary Virginia began to see. She looked at the unruffled man before her a bit wonderingly.

"And what do _you_ get out of this?" she asked, unexpectedly. "Mr.

Inglesby is to get me, I am to get his money and a package of letters, my father is to get time to save himself; well then, what do _you_ get? The pleasure of doing something wrong? Revenge?"

But Hunter looked at her with cold astonishment. "You surprise me," he said. "You talk as if you'd been going to see too many of those insufferable screen-plays that make the proletariat sniffle and the intelligent swear. I am merely a business man, Miss Eustis, and attending to this particular affair for my employer is all in the course of the day's work. I--er--am not in a position to refuse to obey orders or to be captious, particularly since Mr. Inglesby has agreed to double my present salary. That in itself is no light inducement--but I get more. I get Mr. Inglesby's personal backing, which means an a.s.sured future to me; as it will mean to you and your father, if you have got the sense you were born with. This is business. Kindly omit melodrama--crude, and not at all your style, really," he finished, critically.

"This is nothing short of villainy. And not at all too crude for _your_ style," said Mary Virginia.

He laughed good-humoredly. "Bad temper is vastly becoming to you," he told her. "It gives you a magnificent color."

And at that Mary Virginia looked at him with eyes in which the shadow of fear was deepening. Hard as nails, cold as ice, to him she was merely a means to an end. He did not even hate her. The guillotine does not hate those whom it decapitates, either; none the less it takes off their heads once they get in the way of the descending knife.

"I suggest," said Hunter, rising, "that you go home now and think the matter over carefully. Weigh what you and your father stand to gain against what you stand to lose. I do not press you for an immediate decision. You shall have a reasonable time for consideration." It was a threat and a command, thinly veiled.

All that night, unable to sleep, she did think the matter over carefully; she turned and twisted it about and about and saw it now from this angle and now from that; and the more she studied it in all its bearings the worse it grew. There was no escape from it.

Suppose, although she knew she could never, never hope to satisfactorily explain them, she nevertheless told her father about those letters and the part they were to be made play, now that his own affairs had reached a crisis? She could fancy herself telling him that he must shield himself behind her skirts if he would save himself from ruin. That ... to James Eustis!

Suppose that the Carolina trigger-finger slipped, as Hunter had nonchalantly admitted might happen: what then? But it is the woman in the case who always suffers the most and the longest; it is the woman, always, who pays the greater price. Her fears magnified the imagined evil, her pride was crucified.

What tortured her most was that they were actually making her party to a wreck that could easily be averted. Hunter had admitted that Eustis could weather the storm, if he were given time. Oh, to gain time for him, then! And she lay there, staring into the dark with wet eyes. How could she help him, she who was also snared?

And in desperation she hit upon a forlorn hope. She dared not speak out openly to anybody, she dared not flatly refuse Inglesby's pretensions, for that would be to invite the avalanche. What she proposed to herself was to hold him off as long as she could. She would not be definite until the last possible minute. Always there was the chance that by some miracle of mercy Eustis might be able to meet those notes when they fell due. Let him do that, and she would then tell him everything. But not now. He was bearing too much, without that added burden.

It cost her a supreme effort to face the situation as it affected herself and Laurence. Life without Laurence! The bare thought of it tested her heart and showed her how inalienably it belonged to him.

But under all his lovingness and his boyishness, Laurence had a sternness, a ruggedness as adamantine as one of Cromwell's Iron-sides.

With him to know would be to act. Well--he mustn't know. It terrified her to think of just what might happen, if Laurence knew.

Under the circ.u.mstances there seemed but one course open to her--to give up Laurence, and that without explanations. For his own sake she had to keep silent--just as Hunter had known she would. What Laurence must think of her, even the loss of his affection and respect, would be part of the price paid for having been a fool.

In the most un.o.btrusive manner they kept in touch with her. Hunter had so adroitly wirepulled, and so deftly softened and toned down Inglesby's crudities, that Mrs. Eustis had become the latter's open champion. Condescending and patronizing, she liked the importance of lending a very rich man her social countenance. She insisted that he was misunderstood. Men of great fortunes are always misunderstood.

n.o.body considers it a virtue to be charitable to the rich--they save all their charity for the poor, who as often as not are undeserving, and are generally insanitary as well. Mrs. Eustis thanked her heavenly Father she was a woman of larger vision, and never thought ill of a man just because he happened to be a millionaire. Millionaires have got souls, she hoped? And hearts? Mrs. Eustis said she knew Mr.

Inglesby's n.o.ble heart, my dear, whether others did or not.

Compelled to apparently jilt Laurence, Mary Virginia sank deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. A terror of Inglesby's power, as of something supernatural, was growing upon her, a terror almost childish in its intensity. He had begun to occupy the niche vacated by the Boogerman her Dah had threatened her with in her nursery. She could barely conceal this terror, save that an instinct warned her that to let him know she feared him would be fatal. And she felt for him a physical repulsion strong enough to be nauseating.

The fact that she disdained and perhaps even disliked him and made no effort to conceal her feelings, did not in the least ruffle his bland complacency nor affront his pride. He knew that not even an Inglesby could hope to find a Mary Virginia more than once in a lifetime, and the haughtier she was the more she pleased him; it added to his innate sense of power, and this in itself endeared her to him inexpressibly.

But as the girl still held out stubbornly, trying to evade the final word that would force a climax disastrous any way she viewed it, Inglesby's patience was exhausted. He was determined to make her come to terms by the word of her own mouth, and he had no doubt that her final word must be Yes; perhaps a Yes reluctant enough, but nevertheless one to which he meant to hold her.

To make that final demand more impressive, Hunter was not entrusted with the interview. Hunter may have been doubtful as to the wisdom of this, but Inglesby could no longer forego the delight of dealing with Mary Virginia personally. On the Sat.u.r.day night, then, Mrs. Eustis being absent, Mr. Inglesby, manicured, ma.s.saged, immaculate, shaven and shorn, called in person; and not daring to refuse, Mary Virginia received him, wondering if for her the end of the world had not come.

He made a mistake, for Mary Virginia had her back against the wall, literally waiting for the Eustis roof to fall. But he could not forego the pleasure of witnessing her pride lower its crest to him. He did not relish a go-between, even such a successful one as his secretary.

He had made up his mind that she should have until to-morrow night, Sunday, to come to a decision--just that long, and not another hour.

He was not getting younger; he wanted to marry, to found a great establishment as whose mistress Mary Virginia should shine. And she was making him lose time.

What Inglesby succeeded in doing was to bring her terror to a head, and to fill her with a sick loathing of him. Under the smooth protestations, the promises, the threats veiled with hateful and oily smiles, the man himself was revealed: crude, brutal, dominant, ruthless, a male animal bull-necked and arrogant, with small eyes, wide nostrils, cruel moist lips, sensual fat white hands she hated.

And he was so sure of her! Mary Virginia found herself smarting under that horrible sureness.

Perfectly at his ease, inclined to be familiar and jocose, he looked insolently about the lovely old room that had never before held such a suitor for a daughter of that house. Watching her with the complacent eyes of an accepted lover, a.s.suming odious airs of proprietorship such as made one wish to throttle him, he was in no hurry to go. It seemed to her that black and withering years rolled over her head before he could bring himself to rise to take his departure. Death could hardly be colder to a mortal than she had been to this man all the evening, and yet it had not disconcerted him in the least!

He stood for a moment regarding her with the eyes of possession. "And to think that to-morrow night I shall have the right to openly claim you as my promised wife!" he exulted. "You can't realize what it means to a man to be able to say to the world that the most beautiful woman in it is his!"

Directly in front of her hung the portrait of the founder of the house in Carolina, the cavalier who had fled to the new world when Charles Stuart's head fell in the old one. It was a fine and proud face, the eyes frank and brave, the mouth firm and sweet. The girl looked from it to George Inglesby's, and found herself unable to speak. But as she stood before him, tall and proud and pale, the loveliness, the appealing charm of her, went like a strong wine to the man's head.

With a quick and fierce movement he seized her hand and covered it with hot and hateful kisses.

At the touch of his lips cold horror seized her. She dragged her hand free and waved him back with a splendid indignation. But Inglesby was out of hand; he had taken the bit between his teeth, and now he bolted.

"Do you think I'm made of stone?" he bellowed, and the mask slipped altogether. There was no hypocrisy about Inglesby now; this was genuine. "Well, I'm not! I'm a man, a flesh-and-blood man, and I'm crazy for you--and you're _mine_! You're _mine_, and you might just as well face the music and get acquainted with me, first as last.

Understand?

"I'm not such a bad sort--what's the matter with me, anyhow? Why ain't I good enough for you or any other woman? Suppose I'm not a young whippersnapper with his head full of nonsense and his pockets full of nothing, can the best popinjay of them all do for you what _I_ can?

Can any of 'em offer you what _I_ can offer? Let him try to: I'll raise his bid!

"Here--don't you stand there staring at me as if I'd tried to slit your throat just because I've kissed your hand. Suppose I did? Why shouldn't I kiss your hand if I want to? It's my hand, when all's said and done, and I'll kiss it again if I feel like it. No, no, beauty, I won't, not if it's going to make you look at me like that! Why, queen, I wouldn't frighten you for worlds! I love you too much to want to do anything but please you. I'd do anything, everything, just to please you, to make you like me! You'll believe that, won't you?" And he held out his hands with a supplicating and impa.s.sioned gesture.

"Why can't we be friends? Try to be friends with me, Mary Virginia!

You would, if you only knew how much I love you. Why, I've loved you ever since that first day I saw you, after you'd come back home. I was going into the bank, and I turned, and there you were! You had on a gray dress, and you wore violets, a big bunch of them. I can smell them yet. G.o.d! It was all up with me! I was crazy about you from the start, and it's been getting worse and worse ... worse and worse!

"You don't know all I mean to do for you, beauty! I'm going to give you this little old world to play with. Nothing's too good for _you_.

Look at me! I'm not an old man yet--I've only just _begun_ to make money for you. Now be a little kind to me. You've got to marry me, you know. Look here: you kiss me good-night, just once, of your own free will, and I swear you shall have anything under the sky you ask me for. Do you want a string of pearls that will make yours look like a child's playpretty? I'll hang a million dollars around that white throat of yours!"