"No, I am poor, I've failed. I'm just beginning to see how much I've failed!"
"If you don't tell me the truth about this I'll do it myself!" she exclaimed fiercely. "You've not been loyal—you've taken pay!"
"Your father took his pay from me," was his half-savage answer. "He's been paid enough! As for me, I don't want any more of this sort of pay."
"What are you going to do—you're not going to sell out to some one else?"
"No, my dear, I'm not going to do precisely what you suggested I should do just a moment ago. I'm not going to sell out. I could do that, too, and make more than any fifty thousand. The foreman in our factory, who knows very little, can sell out to-morrow morning for ten thousand dollars, maybe double or treble that now. The watchman on our door can sell out when he likes. We can all sell out, any of us sell out. But we haven't! If there has been any selling out it has been done by those who built this place here—the place which you found better than the best home I could offer you."
She sat back stiff, silent, somber. "You—you never mean that you are going to throw this away, then!" she asked at length. "What earthly good will that do? Pa'll have it out of you somehow! I'll—I'm going to tell him!"
"Try it," said Charles Halsey easily.
She had courage. "Father," she called out. "Pa! Come here—at once!"
VIII
Rawn rose suddenly up from his chair at the startling quality in her voice. "What's that, Grace?" he called across the long gallery.