Anthony gripped him suddenly.
"Are you cur enough," said he, angrily, "to sacrifice Miss Dalton simply to——"
"You bet I am!" said Johnson Boller. "If it comes down to that, the truth can't hurt her, and any little odds and ends of things that happen before all hands understand the truth will happen to you—not me!"
Anthony smiled wickedly.
"Just listen to me a moment before you start!" he said curtly.
"Listen to what?"
"Something I have to say which will interest you very much! This trifling family affair of yours isn't nearly so serious as you fancy. In a day or two or a week or two it will all blow over—and if it doesn't you may thank your lucky stars to be rid of a woman so infernally unreasonable," said Anthony. "But I'm hanged if I'll permit you to sacrifice that girl!"
"Ho!" said Johnson Boller derisively. "How are you going to stop it?"
"In just this way!" Anthony continued suavely. "You breathe just one word of the truth, Johnson, and I will tell a story which involves you and, while there will not be a word of truth in it, it will get over in great shape, because everybody knows that I'm a man whose word is as good as his bond. I'll tell such a story about you as will raise the very hair on your head and have an infuriated mob after you before the papers have been on the street for twenty minutes! Do you understand?
"The mysterious woman will be an innocent country girl, I think, who came here to make a living and lift the mortgage on the old farm, and whom you approached on the street and finally dazzled with a few lobster palaces. She'll be beautiful and virtuous, Johnson, and I think she'll tell me, in tears, how you fed her the first cocktail she ever tasted! She'll——"