“I wrote them,” reiterated Anice. “No one knew, not even Mr. Standish, until to-day. I brought him here this evening, because something that is to be said must be said in his hearing. I have his promise not to interfere in this interview, but to let me take my own course. It was I, too, at whose advice he bolted the ticket at——”
“You’ve done all this?” blurted Caleb, finding his shattered self-poise at last. “Are you crazy, girl?”
“No; I am quite sane. From the start I have helped Mr. Standish. By my help, I believe, he will win the Governorship. I have learned much from you, in practical politics, Mr. Conover. I intend to put some of that education into use. You see——”
“You’ve backtracked me? You, of all the folks alive! Why, I’d ’a’ gambled my whole pile on your whiteness, girl. This is a measly joke of some kind. It’s——”
“It’s the truth, Mr. Conover.”
And Caleb, looking deep into her eyes, could at last doubt no longer. A dull red crept into his face.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, slow, measured of voice, rigid of body. “Jockeyed by the one person in the world I ever had any trust in! Cleaned out like any drunken sailor in a dance hall! Say,” he added in puzzled querulousness, “what’d the Almighty mean by putting eyes like yours in the face of a——”
A sudden forward movement from Standish checked him, and, incidentally, drove from his brain the last mists of bewilderment. The Railroader settled forward in his chair, his teeth meeting in the stump of the cigar he had so contentedly lighted but a few minutes before. He was himself again; arrogant, masterful, vibrant with quick resource. A sardonic smile creased his wooden face.
“You’re a noble work of God, Miss Lanier, ain’t you?” he sneered. “In Bible days the man who betrayed his Master was made the star villain for all time. But when it’s a woman that does the betraying, I guess even the Bible would have to go shy on words blazing enough to show her up. For three years,” he went on, as Anice, by a quick gesture, silenced Clive’s fierce interruption—“for three years and more you’ve eaten my bread and lived on my money. For three years I’ve treated you like you were a queen. Whatever I’ve done or been to other folks, to you I’ve been as white as any man could be. You’ve had everything from me and mine. And you pay me by playing the petticoat-Judas. Look here, there’s something behind all this! Tell me what it means.”
“It means,” answered Anice, who had borne without wincing the hot lash of the angry man’s scorn—“it means that I have tried to pay a debt. Part I have paid. Part I am paying.”