“Have you got no sense at all? You say the puppy refused you. Don’t you know why?”
“I know the reason you’d give.”
“And that’s the real reason. He has heard about me! He’s got brains enough to understand that his best game is to——”
“Don’t you say another word against him!” cried Beatrice, at the end of her forbearance. “You talk of my being a fool. What do you think of yourself? You don’t want me to marry this man. How do you go about preventing it? Why, you show me that you are not the father who, I thought, loved me, but that you couldn’t love anybody. You show me that you are not the kind of man I thought, but a snob, a hypocritical snob—yes, a hypocritical snob, who has been pulling wires behind mother—you all the time railing at her and at me and at Rhoda as snobs. And then, when you’ve shown me the truth about my surroundings, you go on to attack the man I love—to say about him things I know to be false. Is that what you call clever?”
“I’m glad you’re letting me see you in your true colors,” said the father, so exhausted by his passions that his voice came as little more than a hoarse whisper. “As for that—that fortune hunter who has been making a fool of you—don’t ever mention his name to me again!”
“Do you want me to jump out of this cart?” cried the daughter, quivering with fury.
Richmond pushed the horses into their swiftest trot. He did not speak again until he reined in at the entrance to the gray chateau. Then he said viciously, “Go to your rooms and get ready to leave for New York and Europe. You have two hours and a half.”
IX
FAMILY BEHIND-THE-SCENES
Richmond, shrewd student of human nature and well versed in his favorite child’s peculiarities of will and temper, did not underestimate what she had revealed to him—neither that which she had revealed consciously nor the no less important things she had unconsciously implied. Also, he had seen the man for whom she confessed infatuation, had measured his physical attractions and had got a fair notion of the inner charms which made the physical charms so potent. It was a time for swift and summary action; this adventurer must be got rid of before he could use the foolish child’s infatuation to put himself in a position where he might cause scandal and, if he chose, could exact heavy blackmail. Theoretically, Richmond regarded his daughter as lovely and fascinating enough to bring any man in the world to her feet. Practically, he believed feeling for her had no part in the doings of “that fortune-hunting hound.” He had been young and now was not far from old, yet he had not seen any exception to the rule he held axiomatic—that wherever money is involved at all it is the only real factor.
Yes, it was a time for action, instant and drastic. As he drove back toward Wade’s studio he strove with his rage, trying to calm it so that his sly brain might plot one of those subtle tricks which had got him his vast fortune and had made him about the most admired, most hated and most denounced man in American finance. But every time he thought of his child’s weak-minded lack of self-respect or of the brazen impudence of the penniless artist he fell to grinding his teeth again and to cursing his inability to lock her up until she recovered her senses, and to horsewhip the artist out of the neighborhood. Richmond had been so long used to having his will of any and every human being he happened to need that he latterly had become really insane when opposed. It was enough for a man to appear in his pathway; at once he began to take the worst possible view of that man’s character, a method which greatly assisted him in stifling the voice of conscience. Time was when he, like all men who have built themselves up from small beginnings, had his temper well under control, a bloodhound to be released only when it was prudent and advantageous to do so. But the habit of power had wrought as destructively in him as it has in almost all those who have become rulers. His temper was fast becoming a dangerous weakness—that traitor within who overthrows where foes without could never prevail.