But the great money-lender had his moments of weakness—­moments when he rebelled against his solitary lot.  He knew that his isolated position had been brought about by himself—­fostered by himself, and he knew he preferred that it should be so.  But, nevertheless, at times he felt very lonely, and in these moments of weakness he wondered if he obtained full consolation in his great wealth for his marooned position.  Generally the result of these reflections brought him satisfaction.  How? is a question.  Possibly he forced himself, by that headstrong power with which he bent others who came into contact with him to his will, to such a conclusion.  Lablache was certainly a triumph of relentless purpose over flesh and feelings.

Lablache was nearly fifty, and had lived alone since he was in his teens.  Now he pined as all who live a solitary life must some day pine, for a companion to share his loneliness.  He craved not for the society of his own sex.  With the instinct in us all he wanted a mate to share with him his golden nest.  But this mass of iron nerve and obesity was not as other men.  He did not weakly crave, and then, with his wealth, set out to secure a wife who could raise him in the social scale, or add to the bags which he had watched grow in bulk from flattened folds of sacking, to the distended proportions of miniature balloons.  No, he desired a girl, the only relation of a man whom he had helped to ruin—­a girl who could bring him no social distinction, and who could not add one penny piece to his already enormous wealth.  Moreover, strangely enough, he had conceived for her a passion which was absolutely unholy in its intensity.  It is needless, then, to add, when, speaking of such a man, that, willing or not, he intended that Jacky Allandale should be his.

Thoughts of this wild, quarter-breed girl filled his brain as he sat solitary in his little office on the night of the pusky.  He sat in his favorite chair, in his favorite position.  He was lounging back with his slippered feet resting on the burnished steel foot-rests of the stove.  There was no fire in the stove, of course, but from force of habit he gazed thoughtfully at the mica sides which surrounded the firebox.  Probably in this position he had thought out some of his most dastardly financial schemes and therefore most suitable it seemed now as he calculated his chances of capturing the wild prairie girl for his mate.

He had given up all thoughts of ever obtaining her willing consent, and, although his vanity had been hurt by her rejection of his advances, still he was not the man to be easily thwarted.  His fertile brain had evolved a means by which to achieve his end, and, to his scheme-loving nature, the process was anything but distasteful.  He had always, from the first moment he had decided to make Jacky Allandale his wife, been prepared for such a contingency as her refusal, and had never missed an opportunity of ensnaring her uncle in his financial toils.  He