“That assault was condoned, and, I am given to understand, was personally instigated and abetted by you, Miss Hayden,” continued the enemy. “Mr. Uhlan is not only a gentleman of high social and professional standing, but is to-day one of the best-paid portrait-painters in America. Through the injuries which he sustained in this assault, I find, he is unable to execute a commission for the portrait of one of Pittsburgh’s most prominent millionaires, before the latter sails for Europe. And through that, I regret to inform you, he has sustained a direct loss of exactly twelve thousand dollars.”
A tempered sigh of relief escaped Teddie. She had expected something much worse, something much more difficult of adjustment.
“Well, if that’s all that’s worrying him,” she remarked, “I’ll be quite willing to make his loss good to him.”
The aged attorney, as he sat massaging his bony knuckles, saw that the picking was good. So he could afford to become fatherly again.
“I may as well be frank with you, Miss Hayden, and make it clear from the outset that involved with this claim is one for a corresponding amount based on the personal injuries which Mr. Uhlan has received, injuries which, so far as medical science seems able to determine, give every promise of proving permanent. And there is a further claim of one thousand dollars for costs and medical services, which establishes the total claims at a round figure of twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Teddie, who had sat watching him with rather solemn eyes, somewhat startled the sedate William Shotwell by a brief but scornful laugh.
“So that was rather an expensive thump on the nose, wasn’t it?” she observed, with the last of her meekness taking wing. For it began to dawn on her, ignorant as she was of the meaning of money, just what they were trying to do to her.
“I am not prepared to disagree with you,” admitted her enemy, not without acerbity.
“And did he tell you just what he was doing when he got that thump on the nose?” demanded Teddie, with slowly rising indignation.
“He was doing nothing, apparently, which demanded his—his being maimed for life,” the man of the law responded with dignity.