“But I can’t marry off a girl of twenty as if she were a Chinese slave.”  His insistence caused her to display more of her pettish resentment.

“If you can’t deliver the goods, Mrs. Kilgour, I shall take a hand in it.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell her the story.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“She has a sense of honor and of obligation even if you haven’t.  She will pay.  She’ll pay with herself.  That’s a devil of a way to get a wife, but if that’s the only way I’ll take it.”

“But you have just owned up that you have embezzled money.  As Kate’s mother it’s my duty to protect her from disgrace.”

That amazing declaration fairly took away Dodd’s breath.

By the manner in which the woman now looked at him it was plain that he had sunk in her estimation.

“You know, Richard, a mother feels called on to protect a good daughter.”

He got up and stamped on the floor in his passion and swore.

“I appreciate what you did for me—­but, really, I didn’t ask you to steal money—­and I supposed your uncle was always liberal with you.  You should not have told me falsehoods.”

The maddening feature of this calm assumption of superiority was the fact that the woman seemed really to believe for the moment exactly what she was saying and to forget why Dodd had jeopardized his fortunes; her manner showed her shallow estimate of the situation.

“There’s another way of doing it,” raged the young man, infuriated by this repudiation of obligation.  “I’ll blow the whole thing about the two of us—­and she’ll be glad enough to have me after it’s all over.”

“You haven’t any right to bring all this trouble and disgrace into my family.”

“You know one way of preventing it and you’d better get busy, Mrs. Kilgour,” he advised.  “I’m going to give you another chance of keeping your word and paying your debt to me.  I want Kate—­and I have waited for her long enough.”

He clapped on his hat and hurried away.

He left the mother sprawled on a couch, her ringed hands clutched into her dyed hair.  She was still clucking sobs which would not have convinced any unprejudiced hearer that she felt real grief.

When Richard Dodd entered his uncle’s offices in the First National block a little later he was in the mood to force his affairs a bit.  He enjoyed liberties there which the ordinary caller did not have and he walked into Kate Kilgour’s little room without attracting attention or comment.

“I know exactly how you feel about last night, Kate.”  He addressed her respectfully and humbly.  “I understand that this is no place to discuss the matter.  I haven’t come here to do so.  I apologize for the affair.  I’m going to say this to you—­I took your mother’s advice.  She planned the thing and trumped up the errand which called you to that house.  I’m afraid she is rather too romantic.  I only say