“God Almighty!” he gasped, “I am ruined, disgraced!  A thousand furies take that girl; but she shall pay dearly for this.  The police will be here to quell the riot and disperse the crowd outside, and turn out the people who are still inside!”

Looking from the window, he saw that the throng of angry employees were gathered around the old cashier and his daughter in a mighty mob.

“Good Lord! if Halloran were only here, to advise me this time,” he muttered, turning pale with fear.  He could hear their loud, angry voices hurling imprecations at him, and he knew full well that he would never be able to pass through that throng of thoroughly aroused and angry men without their doing him bodily injury, and he told himself in affright that all the Marsh millions for which he had bartered his soul would not save him from the hands of that raging mob.

CHAPTER XXI.

“I like her better than any I have met—­I shall marry her.”

Kendale was clever and quick of resource.  He realized that there must be sudden action on his part.  Should he fly headlong from the place and give up all?  Then a remembrance of the yacht and the horses came to him, and he set his teeth hard together.

“I will see this game through, come what may,” he muttered.

At that instant a daring thought came to him, and he acted upon it before he could have time to back down through cowardice.

Throwing open the window wide, he stepped boldly out upon the ledge in full view of the angry crowd of five hundred employees.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he exclaimed, raising his voice to a high key that all might hear, “I have something to say, and it is only due me that you should listen and then pass judgment.

“Please believe me, one and all, I had no thought, no wish to offend Mr. Conway’s pretty daughter Margery.  I may as well own the truth.  I had fallen desperately in love with the girl and was telling her so, and was just on the point of asking her to accept me as a suitor for her hand when she, mistaking my motives, it appears, called for assistance, and I was not permitted to speak in order to explain.

“Assuring her and all of you that my motives were most honorable, I beg of you to reconsider leaving me in this abrupt fashion.  Return to your posts of duty, and this little difficulty will be adjusted satisfactorily to you and to Miss Conway.”

Kendale was used to making a hit with an audience—­used to throwing his soul, as it were, into anything he had to say.

The effect on the crowd below was magical; for a moment they were stunned.

The old cashier was almost stunned.  The young millionaire was just about proposing marriage to Margery!  Why, what a mistake he had made—­what a terrible mistake!  Even Margery had fallen back a step or two and was clinging to her father’s hand in the greatest amazement.