"No," answered Loveland.
"Shows what you are, den. You're a tief. You try to steal my daughter, because you tink you get her money."
"Oh, Pa, he loves me! It's me he wants!" wailed Isidora, weeping, yet not daring to defend her lover at the expense of womanly self-respect. What good would it do him, she thought, for her to confess who had proposed a runaway marriage? Her father would be no less angry with Gordon, and he would be a great deal more angry with her—so angry that he would watch her always, perhaps insist on an immediate wedding with Leo Cohen. No, she could not speak; and besides, it would be too humiliating, before Leo. So she only sobbed, and sobbed the louder, when Loveland gently but firmly unlinked her arm from his.
"You're a little fool, Izzie, or you wouldn't believe any such a ting," Alexander scolded her, somewhat softened by her tears. "A feller like dat—a fraud, a liar——"
"If you were a younger man you wouldn't dare to say that," Loveland cut him short. "It's you who are lying."
"What—you call me a liar? You—you cheat, you convict!" sputtered Alexander. "Take dat for your impudence!" And rushing at Loveland like an angry bull, he struck him with both podgy fists.
Isidora screamed, and seized her father's arms, struggling with him, crying out that he was wicked, cruel, ungrateful to the man who had saved his house from burning.
"Don't be afraid, I'm not going to strike back," Loveland reassured her. "He knows that."
"Yes, he knows dat, because he knows youse a coward," Alexander sneered, wheezing asthmatically. "You come over here to cheat Noo York, but you ain't done it, not much. Lucky for you you ain't in prison. Now you get out of my house, quick—see? You just git."
"That's exactly what I'm anxious to do," said Loveland. "Goodbye, Miss Alexander."