He was enclosing the letter when there came a light tap at the office-door, and then the door itself opened to admit Patricia—­a Patricia bright-eyed and determined, alluringly charming in her tightly veiled driving-hat, muffling motor-coat, and dainty gauntlets.

“You?” said Blount not too hospitably.  “I thought you said something about going to Wartrace?”

“So I did, and so I am,” she asserted, coming to sit in the chair last occupied by one Thomas Gryson.

“And the others?” he queried.

“They have just left; gone on ahead in the touring-car.  I was deputed to bring you.”

“But I told you this morning that I couldn’t go, and I can’t!” he protested.

She looked him squarely in the eye.  “Evan, you don’t dare tell me why you can’t!”

“Business,” he pleaded.

“That may be half of the truth, but it isn’t any more than half.”  Then she made the direct appeal:  “I wish you’d tell me, Evan.  I know a little—­just the little that Mrs. Blount has seen fit to tell me—­and no more.  There is trouble threatening; some dreadful trouble.  I saw it yesterday when you were so miserable; I can see it in your eyes this minute.”

Blount got up and began to pace the floor so that she might not see his eyes.  He was no more proof against such an appeal than any lover gladly ready to bare his soul to the woman chosen out of a world of women for his confidant and second self would be.

“I want to tell you,” he affirmed, wheeling abruptly to face her; “I wanted to tell you yesterday, only it was too horrible.  You will know it all when I say that by this time to-morrow the whole State will be ringing with the story of David Blount’s degradation and ruin; and I—­his only son, Patricia—­I shall be the one who will have betrayed him and brought it to pass!”

She blanched a little at that, and there was a great horror in her eyes.  But he noted at the moment, and remembered it afterward, that she did not push him into the harrowing details, as another woman might have done.

“You are very sure, I suppose?” she said gently.

He drew the packet of affidavits from his pocket.

“This is the evidence:  sworn statements incriminating my father and many others.”

“You had those papers yesterday?”

“No.  I got up last night to keep my appointment with the man who brought them.  But you see now why I can’t go to Wartrace with you.”

“I see that you are going to do something for which you will never, never be able to forgive yourself,” she said gravely.  “You are going to make use of those papers?”

He sat down and stared gloomily at her.  “Patricia, I have taken a solemn oath.  The law which I have sworn to uphold is greater than—­” He was going to say, “greater than any man’s claim for immunity,” but she finished the sentence otherwise for him.

“Is greater than your love for your father.  I suppose I ought to be able to understand that, but I am not.  Evan, you can’t do it—­you mustn’t do it; every drop of that father’s blood in your veins ought to cry out against it.”