"So you are quite content with Charley's plan—to extort so many dollars from Merril?" she said. "It has one fatal defect; it does not satisfy me."
"Now——" commenced Jordan, but the girl checked him with a gesture.
"I want him crushed, disgraced, imprisoned, ruined altogether."
"Anyway, I owe it to my associates to make sure of the money first."
"And after that you feel you have to stand by Jimmy?"
The man winced when she flung the question at him; but when he did not answer she appeared to rouse herself for an effort, leaning forward a trifle with a gleam in her eyes and the red flush plainer in her cheek.
"Still," she said, "if Jimmy is what I think him, he will not ask it of you. I want him to go back six years to the time he came home—from Portland, wasn't it, Jimmy?—and stayed a few weeks with us. Was there any shadow upon us then, though your father was getting old? I want you to remember him as he was when you went away, a simple, kindly, abstemious, and fearless man. It surely can't be very hard."
Jimmy face grew furrowed, and he set his lips tight; but he said nothing, and the girl went on:
"It was not so the next time you came back. Something had happened in the meanwhile. The bondholder had laid his grasp on him. He was weakening under it, and the lust of drink was crushing the courage out of him. Still, you must remember that it was his one consolation. Then came the awful climax of the closing scene. I had to face it with Charley—you were away—but you must realize the horror it brought me."
Jordan turned toward her abruptly. "Eleanor," he said, with a trace of hoarseness in his voice, "let it drop. You can't bear the thing a second time."