“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 circumstances 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.