injunction; the best counsel said so; and the criminal proceedings—­“Had there been criminal proceedings?” asked Margaret, with a stricture at her heart—­had broken down completely, hadn’t a leg to stand on, never had, were only begun to bluff the company.  It was a purely malicious prosecution.  And Henderson did not think it necessary to tell Margaret that only Uncle Jerry’s dexterity had spared both of them the experience of a night in the Ludlow Street jail.

“Come,” said Henderson—­“come into the library.  I have something to tell you.”  He put his arm round her as they walked, and seating himself in his chair by his desk in front of the fire, he tried to draw Margaret to sit on his knee.

“No; I’ll sit here, so that I can see you,” she said, composed and unyielding.

He took out his pocket-book, selected a slip of paper, and laid it on the table before him.  “There, that is a check for seven hundred dollars.  I looked in the books.  That is the interest for a year on the Fletcher bonds.  Might as well make it an even year; it will be that soon.”

“Do you mean to say—­” asked Margaret, leaning forward.

“Yes; to brighten up the Christmas up there a little.”

“—­that you are going to send that to Mrs. Fletcher?” Margaret had risen.

“Oh, no; that wouldn’t do.  I cannot send it, nor know anything about it.  It would raise the—­well, it would—­if the other bondholders knew anything about it.  But you can change that for your check, and nobody the wiser.”

“Oh, Rodney!” She was on his knee now.  He was good, after all.  Her head was on his shoulder, and she was crying a little.  “I’ve been so unhappy, so unhappy, all day!  And I can send that?” She sprang up.  “I’ll do it this minute—­I’ll run and get my check-book!” But before she reached the door she turned back, and came and stood by him and kissed him again and again, and tumbled up his hair, and looked at him.  There is, after all, nothing in the world like a woman.

“Time enough in the morning,” said Henderson, detaining her.  “I want to tell you all about it.”

What he told her was, in fact, the case as it had been presented by his lawyers, and it seemed a very large, a constitutional, kind of case.  “Of course,” he said, “in the rivalry and competition of business somebody must go to the wall, and in a great scheme of development and reorganization of the transportation of a region as big as an empire some individual interests will suffer.  You can’t help these changes.  I’m sorry for some of them—­very sorry; but nothing would ever be done if we waited to consider every little interest.  And that the men who create these great works, and organize these schemes for the benefit of the whole public, shouldn’t make anything by their superior enterprise and courage is all nonsense.  The world is not made that way.”