"Miss Harris, you are the cruelest, most despicable girl I have ever known. Madge reverenced the memory of her father as something too sacred for discussion. I know that her greatest ambition in life was to find some one who had been his friend, some one who could tell her of him. Happily for Madge, I do not believe your accusation to be true. I am equally sure that her motive for silence is one you could never understand."
With a stiff little nod to the others Phil walked proudly to the door. She was followed by Lillian and Eleanor. Three minutes later Flora Harris and Alfred Thornton stood alone in the pretty banqueting room. Her revenge had cost her far more dearly than she had anticipated.
ADRIFT ON CHESAPEAKE BAY
"Alfred Thornton, you must do it." Flora Harris spoke under her breath. Half an hour had passed since she and Alfred Thornton had left the hotel.
The young man was about to say good night to her at her gate after having stubbornly refused to execute a certain commission for her.
"I can't do it," he protested. "If I were you, I'd let Madge Morton and her crowd alone. I did not believe to-night, until the last minute, that you would do as you had threatened. You didn't distinguish yourself by it."
Flora Harris shrugged her thin shoulders in the darkness. "Don't pretend to be shocked," she sneered, "and never mind lecturing me. Are you going to help me or are you going to play the coward at the last moment?"
"I have given you my answer. I'm not going to change it, either," repeated the youth sullenly, edging away from Miss Harris. "I think Miss Morton and her friends have had trouble enough. I don't wish to do anything that might possibly endanger their safety."
"Oh, very well," rejoined Flora angrily. "You know the alternative. If you won't do what I ask of you, I shall tell my father that you have been down here as a hired spy to find out about Jimmy Lawton's invention. I shall tell him that you offered Jimmy thousands of dollars for his patent, and advised him to sell out to you, and then to tell the Government that he had failed with his model. It would ruin not only your reputation, Alfred Thornton, for me to tell this story about you, it would probably do your father a great deal of harm. It would be a serious thing for your father if certain persons were to find out that he was trying to steal a valuable invention from his own country."