“Oh, any one would be an improvement on poor Bob.”
In answer, Vickers got up, and going over to where she stood beside the window, he told her his story. He told it ostensibly to her alone, but Emmons on the sofa was plainly an interested listener. Vickers spoke with that simplicity, that directness and absence of any attempt at self-justification, which the wise use when they are most desirous of being leniently judged.
From the first, he began to hope that he was succeeding. Nellie regarded him with a clear and steady glance from the start, and when he had finished, she remained gazing at him—no longer doubtful, but with something almost terror-stricken in her expression.
In the pause that followed, Emmons turned to the lawyer.
“Now, you are a clever man, Mr. Overton,” he said easily. “Perhaps you can explain to me, why it is that a fellow who is known to be a thief and a liar should be in such a hurry to write himself down a murderer as well?”
The tone and manner of the interruption, coming at a moment of high emotion, were too much for Vickers’s temper. He turned on Emmons white with rage.
“I’ve stood about as much as I mean to stand from you,” he said. “Overton and Nellie are welcome to believe me or not as they like, but you will either believe me or leave this house.”
His tone was so menacing that Overton stood up, expecting trouble, but it was Nellie who spoke.
“James will do nothing of the kind,” she said. “If you are not Bob Lee you have no right to say who shall stay in this house and who shall not. The house is mine, and I won’t have any one in it who can’t be civil to James.”
“Then you certainly can’t have me,” said Vickers.