“I’ll have to go back a bit first—back to the old college days. Do you remember the old woman who lived on the flat below the campus? the one who used to smuggle liquor and other contraband into the dormitories when she came to scrub?”
“Mother Harding? Yes.”
“Well, you don’t remember any good of her, I fancy—or of her daughter. But let that pass. The year after you went to Heidelberg the girl blossomed out into a woman between two days, and went wrong the day after, as the daughter of such a mother was bound to. I got it into my callow brain that I was responsible. I know better now; I ought to have known better then; but—well, to shorten a long story, she has managed to spoil my life for me, root and branch.”
The assayer got upon his feet and swore out of a full heart.
“Good God, Brant! You don’t mean to say that you married that brazen——”
But Brant stopped him with a quick gesture. “Don’t call her hard names, Ned; I shot a man once for doing that. No, I didn’t marry her; I did a worse thing. Now you know why I can’t turn the clean leaf. Let the blame lie where it will—and it is pretty evenly divided between us now—I’m not cur enough to turn my back on her at this stage of the game.”
Hobart tramped up and down the slab-floored porch, four strides and a turn, for two full minutes before he could frame the final question.
“Where is she now, George?”
Brant’s laugh was of hardihood. “Do you hear that piano going down there in Dick Gaynard’s dance hall? She is playing it.”
“Heavens and earth! Then she is here—in Silverette?”