“When,” he asked, “do you expect to leave town?”
“To-day, to-morrow—I cannot tell. I am ready to go now.”
“To be gone five years,” he said thoughtfully. “Very well; we will finish this business at once. Let me advise you to attend to your taxes promptly hereafter; and if——”
“Thank you,” interrupted Barbara haughtily. “I shall be able, I am sure, to meet all obligations in the future. The farm may be worthless, worn out, but it will pay for itself.”
He did not appear to have heard her last words. He was busily arranging various papers. And presently he handed her the cancelled bond and mortgage, and the receipted tax bills, all neatly arranged. In return she counted out to him, with fingers which trembled in spite of herself, the crisp bills for which she had sold her youth.
“There!” she said rather breathlessly. “Is that all?”
“All,” he repeated quietly. “And it is all quite right. Thank you.”
She looked at him uncertainly. His head was bent, his eyes fixed upon the pile of rustling bank-notes which she had just pushed toward him.
A sudden unreasoning sense of dismay fell upon the girl, shadowing the triumph in her face. She made swift retreat toward the door, casting a half-frightened backward look at the sombre figure behind the desk.
He did not lift his eyes from their unseeing contemplation of the money, even when the jarring sound of the hard-shut door told him she was gone.