“By the way, Miss Kilgour,” he informed her, “you need not remain.  Make two typewritten copies—­the judge will need one.”

Richard Dodd arose when she left her chair, but she did not glance at him.  He began to speak before she had reached the door, unable to restrain his jealous temper longer.

“Uncle Symonds, pass the word to that old Provancher, through the superintendent of the Gamonic, that unless he comes across with all the stuff he knows about that Farr he’ll be fired.  And I’ve got a hunter out on my own account.  It will be easy enough to catch the skunk and strip off his pelt.”

Miss Kilgour closed the door behind her with a sharper click than she had ever given its latch before.  She hurried to her typewriter in her little room and began to work with all her energy.

She was so busy and her machine clattered so viciously that she did not hear Richard Dodd when he entered.  He leaned over her.

“Have you talked with your mother yet?  Has she given you some advice?” he asked.  His jealousy still fired him and his tone was not conciliatory.

The contempt in the glance she flung upward at him roused him to passion.  In the state of mind in which he then was he made no allowances for her ignorance of conditions in her mother’s case.  He knew what he had done for Mrs. Kilgour’s sake, and this attitude on the daughter’s part pricked him like wilful ingratitude.

He put his hands on the keyboard of the typewriter and stopped her work.  “I love you, Kate, and you have known it for a long time.  I tried to show you how much I loved you.  I know I did a foolish thing.  But I loved you.”  He almost sobbed the protestation.  “I’ve been in hell’s torment since it happened.  I’ve been a fool all the way through, but I won’t be a fool any more if you’ll take pity on me.”

She did not speak.  Her silent, utter contempt stung more deeply and surely than words.

“If you insist on being so high above, I’m going to bring you down a little,” he sneered.  “I hate to do it, but you’ve got to be shown where your real friends are.  I have given your mother a chance to say something to you, and say it right.  But she hasn’t done it, and I don’t propose to be made the goat.”  In his anger he was not choice in his language.  “You go home and ask her whether or not she owes me five thousand dollars.  Oh, you needn’t open your eyes at me in that style!  It’s time we all got down to cases in this thing, Kate.  I’ve waited for her long enough.  She has simply fluffed me along.  Now she has got to do her part.”

“Have you lost your mind?” she demanded.

“No!  But I lost five thousand dollars when I loaned it to your mother.  Kate, she told me she had a stock deal on—­that she would be able to pay it back.  Listen!  I may as well go the limit with you.  I took money that wasn’t mine so that I could help your mother out—­it was because I loved you.  Now you realize how much I have loved you.  I protected your mother.  And now, by the gods, if you and she don’t come to the scratch in this thing and do right by me I’ll show up why she had to be protected, and after that you’ll never draw a happy breath again in your life.  I advised you to talk with your mother once before.  This time you’d better to it.”