“No,” he protested, almost sternly, “I can’t let you do this. You would remember it ever afterwards with regret.”
The girl seemed to nerve herself for an effort, and when she spoke her voice was impressively quiet.
“You must listen and try to understand,” she said.
“It is not only because it would hurt me to see you and the others tricked out of what you have worked so hard for that I feel I must tell you. If there was nothing more than that, I might, perhaps, never have told you, after all. I want to save my father from a shameful thing.” Her voice broke away, and the crimson flush on her face deepened as she went on again. “He has been offering to sell land that can’t belong to him,” she asserted accusingly.
Nasmyth felt sorry for her, and he made an attempt to offer her a grain of consolation.
“A few acres are really his,” he said. “I made them over to him.”
“To be his only if he did his share, and when the scheme proved successful,” Laura interrupted. “I know, if he has sold them, what an opportunity of harassing you it will give the men who are plotting against you. Still, now you know, you can, perhaps, break off the bargain. I want you to do what you can”––and she glanced at him with a tense look in her eyes––“if it is only to save him.”
“That,” replied Nasmyth quietly, “is, for quite another reason, the object I have in view. I would like you to understand that I have guessed that he had failed us already. It may be some little consolation. Now, perhaps, you had better tell me exactly what you know.”
Laura did so, and it proved to be no more than Nasmyth had suspected. Letters had passed between Waynefleet and somebody in Victoria, and the day after he left for that city two men, who had evidently crossed him on the way, arrived at the ranch. One said his name was Hames, and his conversation suggested that he supposed the girl was acquainted with her father’s affairs. In any case, what he said made it clear that he had either purchased, or was about to purchase from Waynefleet, certain land in the valley. After staying half an hour, the men had, Laura understood, set out again for Victoria.