"What do you mean—helping himself?" The girl leaned forward and her hands tightened until the nails pressed into her flesh.
Rufus Carder slipped his fingers into an inside pocket and drew forth two checks which he held in such a way that she could read them.
"You don't know my signature," he went on, "but that is it. Large as life and twice as natural. Yes"—he regarded the checks—"twice as natural. I couldn't have done them better myself."
Geraldine's hands flew to her heart, her eyes spoke an anguished question.
"Yes," Rufus nodded, "Dick did those." The speaker paused and slipped the checks back into his pocket. "I breathed fire when I discovered it, and then very strangely something occurred which put the fire out." Again he leaned his elbows on the chair-arms, and bent toward the wide eyes and parted lips opposite. "I saw you sitting in the park one day," he went on slowly, "you got up and walked and laughed with a girl companion. I found out who you were. I went to your father, who was nearly crazy with apprehension at the time, and I told him there was no girl on earth for me but you, and that if he would give you to me I would forgive his crime. I didn't want a forger for a father-in-law. It was arranged that this month he should bring you out here and make his wishes known. His reputation was safe. Even Juliet suspected nothing. He is still mourned at his clubs as the prince of good fellows; but his sudden death prevented him from puttin' your hand in mine."
A silence followed, broken only by the rasping of the lawn-mower and Rufus Carder watched the girl's heaving breast.
"So you see," he went on at last, "all you have to do to save your father's name is to sit down in the lap of luxury; not a very hard thing to do, I should think. You'll find that I'll take—" The speaker paused, for another sound now broke in upon the click of the lawn-mower, an increasingly sharp noise which brought him to his feet and to one of the many windows which gave him a view in every direction.
A motor-cycle was speeding up the driveway.
"That's Sam Foster comin' to pay his rent," he said. "There'll be many a one on that errand along about now," he declared with satisfaction. "Cheer up," he added, turning back to the pale face and tremulous lips of the young girl. "Your father wasn't the first fine man to go wrong; but they don't all have somebody to stick by 'em and shield 'em as he did. The more you think it over, the more—"
The motor-cycle had stopped during this declaration, and the rider now stepped into the office-door. Geraldine, her hands still unconsciously on her heart, gazed at the newcomer. Could it be that Rufus Carder had a tenant like this youth? The well-born, the well-bred, showed in his erect bearing and in his sunny brown eyes, and the smile that matched them.