He bent over her with sudden passion.
“Marry me, Barbara,” he begged in a low, shaken voice. “If you only will, I’ll manage it somehow.”
“I—can’t,” she murmured. “I am in honor bound. Don’t you see? I’ve accepted the money, and paid a part of it for debts.”
He threw himself down in his chair and pulled it toward hers impatiently.
“Let me think,” he said quickly. “You’ve paid off your mortgage. How much was it?”
She told him, and he set down the figures rapidly.
“Who held your mortgage?” he wanted to know.
“Stephen Jarvis,” she said, with a singular reluctance at which she wondered, even while she perceived it.
“Miserly old crab; I remember him,” said David Whitcomb.