"Neither. I've nothing. Let that alone. It has nothing to do with this."
A dull flush was on the speaker's face.
"Then—" began Dillard, but he stopped, reddened, and glanced aside. In that moment jealousy was added to his other worries. He had never supposed for an instant that Doctor Glenning was in love with Julia Dudley. The idea was silly, for their acquaintance had been limited to a few days. But what did this mean? His mind was not preternaturally acute; in fact, he was rather dull than bright, but a simpleton would have cause to suspect something when a man, himself almost penniless, was willing to sacrifice a considerable sum of money in order that a destitute old man and his lovely daughter should not suffer humiliation and hunger. It was possible for this act to be one of pure philanthropy, but even Dillard's slow-moving intellect could not see it in that light. It simply meant that another man had found and appreciated this sheltered flower of womanhood that he had watched grow, and bud, and bloom, and that she had aroused in this other man a passion akin to his own. These thoughts traveled with unusual rapidity through Dillard's brain, the while his companion sat with head thrust forward, watching him.
"Then—what?" queried Glenning. "What were you going to say?"
"What are you doing this for?"
"What would you do it for, if you could?"
"Friendship for the family," was the somewhat sullen reply.
"Friendship fiddlesticks!" retorted John. "You'd do it for no such reason, but for that sweet girl-woman in distress!"
He brought his fist down on the table as he said this so that the lamp jumped and the blaze shot up the chimney, and glared defiance at the man across from him.
Dillard's heart seemed trying to pump the blood through his skin, but he only looked at John as though he had been addressed in Arabic or Chinese.