“Take it, and see.”
“If it’s money, I won’t touch it,” Ralston answered, beginning to grow pale, for he saw that it was a cheque, and it seemed just then like a worse insult than the first.
“It’s not for you. It’s a matter of business. Take it!”
Ralston shifted his hat into his left hand and took the cheque in his right, and glanced at it. It was drawn in favour of Katharine Lauderdale for one hundred thousand dollars. He laughed in the old man’s face, being very angry.
“It’s a curiosity, at all events,” he said with contempt, laying it on the table.
“What do you mean?” cried his uncle, growing redder as Ralston turned white.
“There is no Katharine Lauderdale, in the first place,” answered the young man. “The thing isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. If it were worth money, I’d tear it up—if it were for a million.”
“Oh—would you?” The old gentleman looked at Ralston with a sort of fierce, contemptuous unbelief.
“Yes—I would. So would Katharine. I daresay she told you so.”
Robert Lauderdale bit his cigar savagely. It was a little too much to be browbeaten by a mere boy, when he had been used to commanding all his life. Whether he understood Ralston, or whether he completely lost his head, was never clear to either of them, then, or afterwards. He took a fresh cheque and filled it in carefully. His face was scarlet now, and his sandy eyebrows were knitted angrily together. When he had done, he scrutinized the order closely, and then laid it upon the end of the desk under Ralston’s eyes.