He awoke again soon after daylight.  His head was racked with pain.  He, at first, had only a dim recollection of what had occurred the night before.  There was a vague sense of something unpleasant having happened, but he did not attempt to recall it.  He went to his bedroom and douched himself with cold water.  Then he set out for the kitchen in search of coffee with which to slack his burning thirst.  It was not until he had performed his ablutions that the whole truth of his interview with Lablache came back to him.  Immediately, now that the effect of the liquor had passed off, he became a prey to terrible remorse.

Possibly had Jacky been at hand at that moment, the whole course of events might have been altered.  Her presence, a good breakfast, and occupation might have given him strength to carry out the rejection of Lablache’s challenge which his remorse suggested.  However, none of these things were at hand, and John Allandale set out, from force of habit, to get his morning “Collins” down at “old man” Smith’s.  Something to pull him together before he encountered his niece, he told himself.

It was a fatal delusion.  “Old man” Smith sold drink for gain.  The more he sold the better he liked it.  John Allandale’s “Collins” developed, as it always did now, into three or four potent drinks.  So that by the time he returned to the ranch for breakfast his remorse was pushed well into the background, and with feverish craving he lodged for the fateful game.

In spite of his devotion to the bottle John Allandale usually made a hearty breakfast.  But this morning the sight of Jacky presiding at his table upset him, and he left his food almost untasted.  Remorse was deadened but conscience was yet unsilenced within him.  Every time she spoke to him, every time he encountered her piercing gray eyes he felt himself to be a worse than Judas.  In his rough, exaggerated way he told himself that he was selling this girl as surely as did the old slave owners sell their slaves in bygone days.  He endeavored to persuade himself that what he was doing was for the best, and certainly that it was forced upon him.  He would not admit that his mania for poker was the main factor in his acceptance of Lablache’s terms.  Gradually, however, his thoughts became intolerable to him, and when Jacky at last remarked on the fact that he was eating nothing and drinking only his coffee, he could stand it no longer.  He pushed his chair back and rose from the table, and, muttering an excuse, fled from the room.

Her uncle’s precipitate flight alarmed Jacky.  She had seen, as anybody with half an eye could see, that he had had a heavy night.  The bleared eyes, the puffed lids, the working, nervous face were simple enough evidence.  She knew, too, that he had already been drinking this morning.  But these things were not new to her, only painful facts which she was unable to alter; but his strange behavior and lack of appetite were things to set her thinking.