The smoky dusk of the short afternoon was falling outside, while within, under the illumination made by a single electric light, a mother, in the same room where one of Brainard's daughters had plead for the other, was now pleading with him for her son.
No taint had ever fallen before on any of her family or connections. She was crushed and dazed at the thought that anything like this had happened, could have happened, had had the slightest need of happening. And she was dumfounded that all explanation fell upon heedless ears, and that all offers of restitution encountered such, stubborn, brutish, and determined opposition.
"We have lands," she cried, with the tears coursing down her anxious face. "We can make this good, twice and three times over. What more can you want?"
But Brainard did want something more. He wanted the ruin of her son.
"A bank can't deal in real estate," he said doggedly.
He sent a malevolent glance across the table on whose far edge Ogden's bowed head was resting. Beside Ogden stood Fairchild; there was a look of sympathetic distress upon his kindly face.
"It is true," he said, in a low and quiet tone, "that it is not allowable for us to make a loan upon real property; but it would not be amiss for us to take it in payment of this—this—"
"Theft!" cried Brainard loudly. Ogden winced and shuddered; his mother sank into a chair with a low moan.
"Look here, Fairchild," the old man went on, holding up his forefinger with an offensively masterful effect of caution, "it will pay you to go pretty slow just about here. This"—he wagged his head contemptuously towards the bowed: head of the culprit—"was your man. You took his letters; you put him in here. Just stop and think of that!"
Fairchild bit his lip.