‘You are kind to me,’ he acknowledged gravely.  ’And I am sorry to go.  Unless you and your father will consent to come also.  Now, I am going to have my say—­and, Mr. Longstreet, I hope you will forgive me if I am assuming a privilege which is not mine.  I take it that you have no great amount of ready cash.  Further, that your income has been that of most college men, who are all underpaid—­say, three or four or five thousand a year.  I have talked with Nate Kemble about you.  His concern is a tremendously big affair with head offices in New York.  Kemble is a friend of mine:  I own stock in his company:  he will acknowledge, quite as I am prepared to acknowledge, that there is a place for an expert of your type in the company.  And the place will pay you, from the jump, ten thousand dollars.’

Helen fairly gasped.  Despite her father’s talk of the extravagant sums he meant to wrest from the bowels of the earth, she had never dreamed of so princely an income for them.  Longstreet, however, merely shook a smiling head.

‘You’re a real friend, John,’ he said.  ’But here we stick.  And, when you come down to dollars and cents, I’ll eat your new hat for you if I can’t make ten times your ten thousand in the first year.’

Before such amazing confidence Carr stalled.  But he did not give up; it wasn’t his habit of thought to relinquish anything which he had undertaken.  Still for a little he was silent, studying his man.  Again Helen was staring out through the open door.

‘Some one is coming,’ she announced.  Then, her tone quickening, ’It is Mr. Howard; I knew he would be riding over before night.  I know his horse,’ she explained hastily, flushing a trifle under Carr’s eyes which told her that he was surprised that she could tell who it was at such a distance.  ’It is the horse he rode the first time we ever saw him.  There is some one with him.  It looks like——­’

She did not say whom it looked like.  Carr and Longstreet looked out.  The second rider was a woman; her horse was not Sanchia Murray’s white mare, but none the less they all knew that with Alan Howard came Sanchia.  Carr’s heavy brows gathered blackly.  The flush died out of Helen’s face and her lips tightened.  Longstreet sprang up and went to the door.

‘If it is Mrs. Murray,’ he called back, something like triumph in his excited voice, ’and if she is coming here—­why, then maybe there was a mistake after all.’

‘She is not coming here!’ cried Helen hotly.  ’Papa, I will not have that woman in the house.  After the way she has cheated you, fooled you, lied to you——­’

‘Come, come, my dear,’ chided Longstreet.  ’No one must be judged and condemned unheard.  And remember that she is coming with Mr. Howard.’

Helen looked hopelessly at Carr.  There were times when she utterly despaired of her father.  But she could find comfort in the thought that if that Sanchia woman sought to perpetrate any more of her villainy and deceit, she was going to stand at her father’s side through all of it.  Meantime the two riders came on swiftly.  As they drew up at the door Helen saw that Howard looked worried and ill at ease and that Sanchia Murray’s eyes were red as though with copious weeping.  Whereas Helen sniffed audibly.