He closed the book and put it away.  Then he walked to the window.  Bunning-Ford’s horse was still standing outside the house.

“He must be dealt with soon,” he muttered.

And in those words was concentrated a world of hate and cruel purpose.

Who shall say of what a man’s disposition is composed?  Who shall penetrate those complex feelings which go to make a man what his secret consciousness knows himself to be?  Not even the man himself can tell the why and wherefore of his passions and motives.  It is a matter beyond the human ken.  It is a matter which neither science nor learning can tell us of.  Verner Lablache was possessed of all that prosperity could give him.  He was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, and no pleasure which money could buy was beyond his reach.  He knew, only too well, that when the moment came, and he wished it, he could set out for any of the great centers of fashion and society, and there purchase for himself a wife who would fulfill the requirements of the most fastidious.  In his own arrogant mind he went further, and protested that he could choose whom he would and she would be his.  But this method he set aside as too simple, and, instead, had decided to select for his wife a girl whom he had watched grow up to womanhood from the first day that she had opened her great, wondering eyes upon the world.  And thus far he had been thwarted.  All his wealth went for nothing.  The whim of this girl he had chosen was more powerful in this matter than was gold—­the gold he loved.  But Lablache was not the man to sit down and admit of defeat; he meant to marry Joaquina Allandale willy-nilly.  Love was impossible to such a man as he.  He had conceived an absorbing passion for her, it is true, but love—­as it is generally understood—­no.  He was not a young man—­the victim of a passion, fierce but transient.  He was matured in all respects—­in mind and body.  His passion was lasting, if impure, and he meant to take to himself the girl-wife.  Nothing should stand in his way.

He turned back to his desk, but not to work.

In the meantime the object of his forcible attentions was holding an interesting tete-a-tete with the man against whom he fostered an evil purpose.

Jacky was seated at a table in the pleasant sitting-room of her uncle’s house.  Spread out before her were several open stock books, from which she was endeavoring to estimate the probable number of “beeves” which the early spring would produce.  This was a task which she always liked to do herself before the round-up was complete, so as the easier to sort the animals into their various pastures when they should come in.  Her visitor was standing with his back to the stove, in typical Canadian fashion.  He was, clad in a pair of well-worn chaps drawn over a pair of moleskin trousers, and wore a gray tweed coat and waistcoat over a soft cotton shirt, of the “collar attached” type.  As he stood there the stoop of his shoulders was very pronounced.  His fair hair was carefully brushed, and although his face was slightly weather-stained, still, it was quite easy to imagine the distinguished figure he would be, clad in all the solemn pomp of broadcloth and the silk glaze of fashionable society in the neighborhood of Bond Street.