might want money."
He dropped into a chair before her with his broad heavy hands upon his
knees, and looked at her with an equal, though baser, contempt: for his
was mingled with a certain pride of mastery and possession.
"And, of course, you'll go to Hymettus and cut a splurge as you always
do. The beautiful Mrs. Horncastle! The helpless victim of a wretched,
dissipated, disgraced, gambling husband. So dreadfully sad, you know,
and so interesting! Could get a divorce from the brute if she wanted,
but won't, on account of her religious scruples. And so while the brute
is gambling, swindling, disgracing himself, and dodging a shot here
and a lynch committee there, two or three hundred miles away, you're
splurging round in first-class hotels and watering-places, doing the
injured and abused, and run after by a lot of men who are ready to take
my place, and, maybe, some of my reputation along with it."
"Stop!" she said suddenly, in a voice that made the glass chandelier
ring. He had risen too, with a quick, uneasy glance towards the door.
But her outbreak passed as suddenly, and sinking back into her chair,
she said, with her previous scornful resignation, "Never mind. Go on.
You KNOW you're lying!"
He sat down again and looked at her critically. "Yes, as far as you're
concerned I WAS lying! I know your style. But as you know, too, that
I'd kill you and the first man I suspected, and there ain't a judge or
a jury in all Californy that wouldn't let me go free for it, and even
consider, too, that it had wiped off the whole slate agin me--it's to my
credit!"
"I know what you men call chivalry," she said coldly, "but I did not
come here to buy a knowledge of that. So now about the child?" she ended
abruptly, leaning forward again with the same look of eager solicitude
in her eyes.
"Well, about the child--our child--though, perhaps, I prefer to say MY
child," he began, with a certain brutal frankness. "I'll tell you. But
first, I don't want you to talk about BUYING your information of me.
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