"You advertised her in the papers, didn't you, when you left?—(after the usual fashion, 'harboring and trusting,' and all that)—were you afraid she would run you in debt?"
"Devil a bit; she's too proud for that; she would have starved first."
"Why did you do it, then?"
"To mortify her confounded pride," said Stahle, with a diabolical sneer, "and to injure her in public estimation. That stroke, at least, told for a time."
"A pretty set of friends she must have had," said Smith, "to have stood by and borne all that."
"Oh, I know them all, root and branch. I knew I could go to the full length of my rope without any of their interference. In fact, their neglect of her helped me more than any thing else. Every body said I must have been an injured man, and that the stories I had circulated must be true about her, or they would certainly have defended and sheltered her. I knew them—I knew it would work just so; that was so much in my favor, you see."
"They liked you, then?"
Stahle applied his thumbs to the end of his nose, and gave another diabolical sneer.
"Liked me! Humph! They all looked down on me as a vulgar fellow. I was tolerated, and that was all—hardly that."
"I don't understand it, then," said Smith.