"Well, out with it. What do you want?"
"Sit down," said Worth, pointing to a chair. Mechanically the other obeyed. "You have no reason for taking this attitude toward me, Mr. Greenfield," began Worth with his air of simply stating a fact.
At his words the wrath of the other again mastered him. "No reason! You—you dare to tell me that? When you and the young woman that you call your daughter have come between me and the boy who is more than a son to me! When you have broken our close relationship of years' standing and robbed me of his companionship! When you have wrecked and ruined all my plans for his future! When you have defeated the object of my life! No reason? But what can you understand of us? You're a nobody, sir, without a place or a name in the world; a common, low-bred, ignorant sharper with no family but a nameless daughter of unknown parentage whom you found on the desert. How can you understand what Willard Holmes is to me?"
"I figured that you would feel this way about it," came the colorless words. "That's what I came here for to-night—to fix it up."
The angry amazement of Greenfield at what he considered the man's presumption could find no expression.
Worth continued: "I know a great deal more about you and your folks than you think. When I saw that my"—he hesitated over the word, then spoke it plainly—"my daughter was becoming interested in Willard Holmes, I took some pains to look up his history. In doing that I naturally found out a good deal about you. Later I learned a good deal more."
"It is immaterial to me what you know," muttered the other in a tone of deep disgust. "What do you want?"
Worth spoke with quiet dignity. "I want you to understand first, Mr. Greenfield, that my girl is just as much to me as young Holmes is to you. You are right; I am a nobody, ignorant and all that, but you must not think Mr. Greenfield that because you belong in New York and I belong in the West that this thing is harder for you than it is for me. You are not going to lose your boy but I"—for the first time he hesitated and his voice expressed emotion—"I am going to lose my girl."
The pathos of this lonely man's words touched even Greenfield. His manner was more gentle as he said gruffly: "It's a bad business, Mr. Worth; a damned bad business for both of us. I wish I had never heard of this country."
"You'll feel different about that. Anyway I figure that this country and this work will be here long after you and I are gone, and so will these young people." Again he hesitated and his slim fingers caressed his chin. Then from behind that gray mask he asked: "How much do you know about our finding Barbara in the desert?"