“Yes–I guess so,” she agreed half-heartedly. “You’d think so, but we don’t seem to go.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he inquired after a silence. “You know what I told you once, Virginia.”
“Yes, I know,” she answered bitterly, “but–Oh, I’m ashamed to let you help me, after the way I acted up about Charley.”
“Well, forget it,” he said at length. “I guess I 123get kind of ugly when anyone doubts my good faith. It’s on account of my father, and calling him Honest John–but say, I forgot to tell the news!”
Virginia looked up inquiringly and he beckoned her into the corner where no one could overhear his words.
“Blount sent for me yesterday–trying to sell me the mine,” he whispered in her ear, “and I made him show me his stock. And when I looked on the back of his promotion certificates–the ones he got for promoting the mine–I found by the endorsements that he’d sold every one of them before or during the panic. Do you see? They were street certificates, passing from hand to hand without going to the company for transfer, but every broker that handled them had written down his name as a memorandum of the date and sale. Don’t you see what he did–he set your father against my father, and my father against yours, and all the time, like the crook he is, he was selling them both out for a profit. I could have killed him, the old dog, only I thought it would hurt him more to whipsaw him out of his mine; but listen now, Virginia, don’t you think we can be friends–because my father never robbed anybody of a cent! He thought more of the Colonel than he did of me; and I’ve started out, even if it is a little late, to prove that he was on the square.”
He stopped abruptly, for in his rush of words he had failed to note the anger in her eyes, until now she turned and faced him.
124“Oho!” she said, “so that’s your idea–you’re going to whipsaw Blount out of his mine?”
“If I can!” hedged Wiley. “But for the Lord’s sake, Virginia, don’t tell what I said to your mother! It won’t make any difference, because she’s given me a quit-claim–but what’s the use of having any trouble?”
“Yes, sure enough!” murmured Virginia, with cutting sarcasm. “She might even demand her rights!”