"It was I who helped you to all this land, money, the grand house we shall live in. Oh, who ever thought that a bit of crumpled paper would do so much?"
Storms shrugged his shoulders, and prepared to walk onward.
Judith saw this, and her temper, always ready to take fire, kindled up.
"You lift your shoulders—you keep silent when I speak of the paper which brought all these grand things, as if you did not mean to give me credit for giving it to you."
"What would the paper have been without a shrewd man to use it? Besides, you found it in the bushes where any other person might have picked it up."
Judith felt a strange choking in her throat.
"What does this mean, Richard Storms?"
"Mean? why, nothing. Only it is getting stormy here. When you lift your voice in that way, it might be heard from the house. Walk on; you have nothing to flare up about."
There was something in the man's voice that would have warned Judith, but for her own rising temper. As it was, she walked toward the precipice, sometimes keeping ahead, and looking back at him over her shoulder. He certainly looked pale in the moonlight.
"Now, Richard, what is the meaning of this offish talk? Is it that you want to get rid of your promise, with all these twistings and turnings?"