“The old game,” he muttered tensely, gazing at the floor with a knitted brow. “Always a woman,” he exclaimed, his voice rising, “a helpless, trusting woman!” he cried, with slow-gathering rage while she sat before him, the picture of desolation. “Just what I might have expected. Despicable hound! And as long as there are trusting, innocent women in this world there will always be scoundrels to rob them.”
“Oh! why did I not wait—why did I not consider the matter?” she moaned.
“Such hopeful safeguards as wait and consider never enter these cases,” came his brief reply. “Under the clever, steady persuasion of these scoundrels a woman of your trustful nature never waits or considers. What did you give him?”
“A check,” she faltered.
“For how much?”
“My check for seven thousand five hundred dollars,” she confessed faintly.
Enoch’s under lip shot forward. “Ah! my poor lady!” he sighed.
“Which he informed me he deposited,” she added painfully.
Enoch brightened. “Then he has a bank-account, has he? A bank at least. That’s one favorable vestige of hope. Seven thousand five hundred, you say?”
She bent her head, twining and untwining her fingers nervously.