"That remains to be proved," rejoined Ordway shortly. "At any rate if he needs to be convinced I shall tell him as much as I know about you."
"And how much," demanded Wherry insolently, "does that happen to be?"
"Enough to stop the marriage, that is all I want."
"And suppose he asks you—as he probably will—how in the devil it came to be any business of yours?"
For a moment Ordway looked over the whiskey bottle and through the open window into the street below.
"I don't think that will happen," he answered slowly, "but if it does I shall tell him the whole truth as I know it—about myself as well as about you."
"The deuce you will!" exclaimed Wherry. "It appears that you want to take the whole job out of my hands now, doesn't it?"
The flush from the whiskey had overspread his face, and in the midst of the general redness his eyes and teeth flashed brilliantly in an angry laugh. An imaginative sympathy for the man moved Ordway almost in spite of himself, and he wondered, in the long pause, what Wherry's early life had been and if his chance in the world were really a fair one?
"I don't want to be hard on you," said Ordway at last; "it's out of the question that you should have Milly Trend, but if you'll give up that idea and go away I'll do what I can to help you—I'll send you half my salary for the next six months until you are able to find a job."
Wherry looked at him with a deliberate wink.