"Have you considered the cost to these three women if you make their father's name a byword in the city where they were born?"
"He should have considered it," was the unmoved reply.
"David!" she said; and he looked up quickly.
"You want me to let him resign? It would be compounding a felony. He is a Judge, and he was bribed."
She sat down beside him in the cushioned window seat and began to plead with him.
"You must let him go," she insisted. "It is entirely in your hands as chairman of the House committee; the governor, himself, told me so. I know all you say about him is true; but he is old and wretched, with only a little while to live, at best."
There was a curious little smile curling his lip when he answered her.
"He has chosen a good advocate. It is quite like a man of his stamp to try to reach me through you."
"David!" she said again. Then: "I really shouldn't know him if I were to see him."
"Then why——" he began; but there was a love-light in the blue-gray eyes to set his heart afire. "You are doing this for me?" he said, trembling on the verge of things unutterable.