“But can you not, at least temporarily, disguise from him just how you have arranged the relief?”

Her big blue eyes stared at me in bewilderment.

“Mr. Randolph, I could not deceive father.  I could not tell him a lie even to save his life.  It would be impossible.  My father abhors a lie.  He believes a man or woman who would lie the lowest of the low things on earth.  When I go back to my father he will say, ’Tell me what you have done.’  I can just see him now, standing between the big white pillars at the end of the driveway.  I can hear him say calmly, ’Beulah, my daughter, welcome.  Your mother is waiting for you in her room.  Do not lose a moment getting to her.’  Afterward he’ll take me over the plantation to show me all the familiar things, and not one word will he allow me to say about our affairs until dinner is over, until the neighbours have left, for no Sands returns from long absence without a fitting home welcome.  When I have said good night to mother and sister and he has drawn up my rocker in front of his big chair in the library alcove and I’ve lighted his cigar for him, he will look me in the eye and say, ’Daughter, tell me all you have done.’  I would no more think of holding anything back than I would of stabbing him to the heart.  No, Mr. Randolph, there is no possibility of relief except in fairly using that $30,000, and fairly winning back what Wall Street has stolen from father.  Even that will cause both of us many twinges of conscience, and anything more is impossible.  If this cannot be done, father must, all of us must, pay the penalty of Reinhart’s ruthless act.”

Bob had listened, but made no comment until she was through; then he said, “It looks to me as though the market is shaping up so that we may be able to do something soon.”  It was evident to both of us that he had some plan in mind.

Later we learned that that night Beulah wrote her father a long letter, telling him what she had done; that she had made almost two millions profit from her operations, that they had been lost, and that the outlook was not reassuring.  She begged him to prepare himself for the final calamity; promising that if there were no change for the better by December 1st, she would come home to be with him when the blow fell.  She begged him to prepare to meet it like a Sands, and assured him that if worse came to worst she would earn enough to keep poverty away.  Judge Sands would receive this letter the second day following, Friday, the 13th day of November.  My God! how well I know the date.  It is seared into my brain as though with a white-hot iron.

After our talk with Beulah Sands I begged Bob to dine with me and go over matters at length to see if we could not find a way out to relief.