"I have money," he said. "More than you know, perhaps. I have had recently a legacy which would of itself make me a comparatively rich man. That I was not dependent upon my pay you knew before. I have no family. I shall not marry. I am fond of your children, of Janey particularly. I should have provided for her future in any case. You have made a bad investment in these lands; transfer them to me and invest in something safer."
"And if the bill fails to pass!" exclaimed Richard.
"If it fails to pass I shall have the land on my hands; if it passes I shall have made something by a venture, and Janey will be the richer; but, as it stands, the venture had better be mine than yours. You have lost enough."
Richard gave his hair an excited toss backward, and stared at him as he had done before; a slight, cold moisture broke out on his forehead.
"You mean"—he began, breathlessly.
"Do you remember," said Tredennis, "what I told you of the comments people were beginning to make? They have assumed the form I told you they would. It is best for—for your children that they should be put an end to. If I assume these risks there will be no farther need for you to use—to exert yourself." He began to look white about the mouth, and through his iron stolidity there was something revealed before which Richard felt himself quail. "The night that Blundel came in to your wife's reception, and remained so short a time, he had heard a remark upon the influence she was exerting over him, and it had had a bad effect. The remark was made publicly at one of the hotels." He turned a little whiter, and the something all the strength in him had held down at the outset leaped to the surface. "I have no wife to—to use," he said; "if I had, by Heavens, I would have spared her!"
He had held himself in hand and been silent a long time, but he could not do it now.
"She is the mother of your children," he cried, clenching his great hand. "And women are beginning to avoid her, and men to bandy her name to and fro. You have deceived her; you have thrown away her fortune; you have used her as an instrument in your schemes. I, who am only an outsider, with no right to defend her—I defend her for her father's sake, for her child's, for her own! You are on the verge of ruin and disgrace. I offer you the chance to retrieve yourself—to retrieve her! Take it, if you are a man!"
Richard had fallen back in his chair breathless and ashen. In all his imaginings of what the future might hold he had never thought of such a possibility as this,—that it should be this man who would turn upon him and place an interpretation so fiercely unsparing upon what he had done! Under all his admiration and respect for the colonel there had been hidden, it must be admitted, an almost unconscious touch of contempt for him, as a rather heavy and unsophisticated personage, scarcely versatile or agile enough, and formed in a mould somewhat obsolete and quixotic,—a safe person to confide in, and one to invite confidence passively by his belief in what was presented to him; a man to make a good listener and to encourage one to believe in one's own statements, certainly not a man to embarrass and discourage a historian by asking difficult questions or translating too literally what was said. He had not asked questions until to-night, and his face had said very little for him on any occasion. Among other things Richard had secretly—though leniently—felt him to be a trifle stolid, and had amiably forgiven him for it. It was this very thing which made the sudden change appear so keen an injustice and injury; it amounted to a breach of confidence, that he should have formed a deliberate and obstinate opinion of his own, entirely unbiassed by the presentation of the case offered to him. He had spoken more than once, it was true, in a manner which had suggested prejudice; but it had been the prejudice of the primeval mind, unable to adjust itself to modern conditions and easily disregarded by more experienced. But now!—he was stolid no longer. His first words had startled Richard beyond expression. His face said more for him than his words; it burned white with the fire it had hidden so long; his great frame quivered with the passion of the moment; when he had clenched his hand it had been in the vain effort to hold it still; and yet the man who saw it recognized in it only the wrath and scorn which had reference to himself. Perhaps it was best that it should have been so,—best that his triviality was so complete that he could see nothing which was not in some way connected with his own personality.
"Tredennis," he gasped out, "you are terribly harsh! I did not think you"—