you are the incentive.  I have watched—­I have little else to do in Foss River—­you all for years past, and there is little that I could not tell you about any of you, as far as the world sees you.  Lablache has been a source of a world of thought to me.  The business side of him is patent to everybody.  He is hard, flinty, tyrannical—­even unscrupulous.  I am telling you nothing new, I know.  But there is another side to his character which some of you seem to ignore.  He is capable of strong passions—­ay, very strong passions.  He has conceived a passion for you.  I will call it by no other name in such an unholy brute as Lablache.  He wishes to marry you—­he means to marry you.”

The silver-haired old lady had worked herself up to an unusual vehemence.  She paused after accentuating her last words.  Jacky, taking advantage of the break, dropped in a question.

“But—­how does this affect my uncle?”

“Aunt” Margaret sniffed disdainfully and resettled the glasses which, in the agitation of the moment, had slipped from her nose.

“Of course it affects your uncle,” she continued more quietly.  “Now listen and I will explain.”  Once more these two seated themselves and “Aunt” Margaret again plunged into her story.

“Sometimes I catch myself speculating as to how it comes about that you have inspired this passion in such a man as Lablache,” she began, glancing into the somberly beautiful face beside her.  “I should have expected that mass of flesh and money—­he always reminds me of a jelly-fish, my dear—­ugh!—­to have wished to take to himself one of your gaudy butterflies from New York or London for a wife; not a simple child of the prairie who is more than half a wild—­wild savage.”  She smiled lovingly into the girl’s face.  “You see these coarse money-grubbers always prefer their pills well gilded, and, as a rule, their matrimonial pills need a lot of gilding to bring them up to the standard of what they think a wife should be.  However, it was not long before it became plain to me that he wished to marry you.  He may be a master of finance; he may disguise his feelings—­if he has any—­in business, so that the shrewdest observer can discover no vulnerable point in his armor of dissimulation.  But when it comes to matters pertaining to—­to—­love—­quite the wrong word in his case, my dear—­these men are as babes; worse, they are fools.  When Lablache makes up his mind to a purpose he generally accomplishes his end—­”

“In business,” suggested Jacky, moodily.

“Just so—­in business, my dear.  In matters matrimonial it may be different.  But I doubt his failure in that,” went on Mrs. Abbot, with a decided snap of her expressive mouth.  “He will try by fair means or foul, and, if I know anything of him, he will never relinquish his purpose.  He asked you to marry him—­and of course you refused, quite natural and right.  He will not risk another refusal from you—­these people consider themselves very sensitive, my dear—­so he will attempt to accomplish his end by other means—­means much more congenial to him, the—­the beast.  There now, I’ve said it, my dear.  The doctor tells me that he is quite the most skilful player at poker that he has ever come across.”