Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/254

 "Everything!" with bitter emphasis. "At least much," floundering to retrieve the admission, "much that I can't explain now, that is really beside the main question. Dale is a man of character, a man"

"You don't say what kind of character! Well, I know all about Dale Findlay, the man that's been robbing us for years and nobody able to stop him. What is it this man holds over you, Uncle Hal? Is he threatening a foreclosure on his security unless I pay the price?"

"Whatever there is between him and me, if anything at all, is between him and me," Nearing returned, with an attempt at the dignity and severity once so fittingly his own. He seemed to forget that he had come a suppliant.

"All right," said Alma, scorning the poor attempt. "Let him go to the devil to cash in on his secrets, whatever they are! I'm not paying that kind of debts for this family!"

"Will it be enough to tell you, then, that this man can ruin me with a word?" Nearing demanded, his voice steady and severe.

He rose from his chair as he spoke, standing outlined against the dim light of the window. Alma could see that he leaned toward her, as if in menace for her defiance.

"No, it is not enough," she told him, with cold bluntness.

There rose in her a feeling of immeasurable contempt for this man, who had, by some rash deed of his past, betrayed himself so completely into another's hands.