“I don’t know what to do,” she thought, piteously; “I’ll wait till Mr. Appleby comes back here, and then I’ll tell him just how I’m placed. Perhaps I can appeal to his better nature.”
But Maida Wheeler well knew that however she might appeal to Samuel Appleby, it would be in vain. She knew from the very fact that he came to her home, and made the offers and threats that he did make, that his mind was made up, and no power on earth could move him from his decision. He had a strong case, he probably thought; the offer of full pardon to Dan Wheeler, and the offer to Maida to keep quiet about another heir, would, he doubtless thought, be sufficient to win his cause.
“What an awful man he is,” she thought. “I wish he were dead! I know I oughtn’t to wish that, but I do. I’d kill him myself if it would help father. I oughtn’t to say that—and I don’t suppose I really would do it, but it would simplify matters a lot! And somebody said, ‘We are all capable of crime—even the best of us.’ Well, of course I wouldn’t kill the old man, but he’d better not give me a real good chance!”
“What are you thinking about, little girl?” asked Allen, turning to her.
Maida looked at him and then at her father, and said, deliberately:
“I was just thinking how I’d like to kill Samuel Appleby.”
“Senior, junior, or both?” laughed Allen, who thought little of her words, save as a jest.
“Senior, I meant, but we may as well make it a wholesale slaughter.”
“Don’t, Maida,” her father looked grieved. “Don’t speak flippantly of such subjects.”
“Well, father, why not be honest? Wouldn’t you like to kill him?”