“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 assure 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 assured 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.