"I know a man. I have had him at the factory and he would be glad to see you. He does not quite understand, but he believes it can be made a success. Wilmarth seems doubtful and strange in some ways——"
"He is working against me,—no need to tell me that! But why?" And the eager eyes study Grandon painfully. "There is some plan in the man's brain. He came to Canada. Do you know what for?"
Grandon looks up in surprise.
"I was amazed. The man may have a better heart or more faith than I credit him with. He was so different in your father's time. It is as if some project or temptation had seized him." Then, after a pause, "He asked my daughter in marriage."
"I thought she was—a child," says Grandon, in amaze.
"So she is. In my country, Mr. Grandon, they manage their daughters differently; not always better, perhaps, but they do not leave them unprotected to the world, to beg their bit of bread, maybe. I have put everything in my invention. It is her dowry."
"And he wished to be the sole master of it?"
"Exactly. She saw him once." And a bitter smile wreaths the deathly face.
"And she does not like him! How could any woman?" Floyd Grandon gives a shiver of disgust.
"I have not told her. Yet a man cannot leave a young girl to make a tiger's fight with the world! She, poor lamb, would soon be rent in pieces."