He tried to put his hand on her shoulder again, beginning to speak remonstratingly, but she cried out in a rage, broke away from him, and ran to the other end of the room.

“Keep away!  Do you suppose I like you to touch me?  He told me you always had been a wonder with women!  Said you were famous for `handling them the right way’—­using them!  Ah, that was pleasant information for me, wasn’t it!  Yes, I could have confirmed him on that point.  He wanted to know if I thought you’d been doing anything of that sort here.  What he meant was:  Had you been using me?”

“What did you tell him?” The question rang sharply on the instant.

“Ha!  That gets into you, does it?” she returned bitterly.  “You can’t overdo your fear of that man, I think, but I didn’t tell him anything.  I just listened and thanked him for the warning, and said I’d have nothing more to do with you.  How could I tell him?  Wasn’t it I that made papa lend you his name, and got Richard to hand over his money?  Where does that put me?” She choked; sobs broke her voice.  “Every—­every soul in town would point me out as a laughing-stock—­the easiest fool out of the asylum!  Do you suppose I want you arrested and the whole thing in the papers?  What I want is Richard’s money back, and I’m going to have it!”

“Can you be quiet for a moment and listen?” he asked gravely.

“If you’ll tell me what chance I have to get it back.”

“Cora,” he said, “you don’t want it back.”

“Oh?  Don’t I?”

“No.”  He smiled faintly, and went on.  “Now, all this nonsense of old Pryor’s isn’t worth denying.  I have met him abroad; that much is true—­and I suppose I have rather a gay reputation——­”

She uttered a jeering shout.

“Wait!” he said.  “I told you I’d cut quite a swathe, when I first talked to you about myself.  Let it go for the present and come down to this question of Lindley’s investment——­”

“Yes.  That’s what I want you to come down to.”

“As soon as Lindley paid in his check I gave him his stock certificates, and cabled the money to be used at once in the development of the oil-fields——­”

“What!  That man told me you’d `promoted’ a South American rubber company once, among people of the American colony in Paris.  The details he gave me sounded strangely familiar!”

“You’d as well be patient, Cora.  Now, that money has probably been partially spent, by this time, on tools and labour and——­”

“What are you trying to——­”

“I’ll show you.  But first I’d like you to understand that nothing can be done to me.  There’s nothing `on’ me!  I’ve acted in good faith, and if the venture in oil is unsuccessful, and the money lost, I can’t be held legally responsible, nor can any one prove that I am.  I could bring forty witnesses from Naples to swear they have helped to bore the wells.  I’m safe as your stubborn friend, Mr. Trumble, himself.  But now then, suppose that old Pryor is right—­as of course he isn’t—­suppose it, merely for a moment, because it will aid me to convey something to your mind.  If I were the kind of man he says I am, and, being such a man, had planted the money out of reach, for my own use, what on earth would induce me to give it back?”