"Oho! So that's the milk in the cocoanut, is it? You sold me out to buy in with him!"
"You may put it that way, if you like; I don't care." She was drawing on her driving-gloves methodically and working the fingers into place, and there were sullen fires in the brooding eyes.
"I've been thinking it was the other one—the book-writer," said the father. Then, without warning: "He's a damned crook."
The daughter went on smoothing the wrinkles out of the fingers of her gloves. "What makes you think so?" she inquired, with indifference, real or skilfully assumed.
"He's got too much money to be straight. I've been keeping cases on him."
"Never mind Mr. Griswold," she interposed. "He is my friend, and I suppose that is enough to make you hate him. About this other matter: ten minutes before three o'clock this afternoon I shall go back to Mr. Raymer. If he tells me that his troubles are straightening themselves out, I'll get the papers."
"You'll bring 'em here to me?"
"Some day; after I'm sure that you have broken off the deal with Mr. Galbraith."
Jasper Grierson let his daughter get as far as the door before he stopped her with a blunt-pointed arrow of contempt.
"I suppose you've fixed it up to marry that college-sharp dub so that his mother and sister can rub it into you right?" he sneered.