Mrs. Kilgour grasped his knees and shook him. But he kept on.
“She had embezzled from Dalton & Company. What I did saved her from prison and you from disgrace, Kate. And now I am in the hole! Listen here! There's hell to pay in this state just now! The soreheads are banding together. A man has just offered to bet me big money that there's going to be an overturn in the State House departments. I don't know whether it will happen—but you can understand what kind of torment I'm in. Kate, are you going to let me stand this thing all alone?”
The girl stood silent and motionless in the middle of the room.
She did not weep or faint. Her face displayed no emotion. It was as white as marble.
“Do you want to drag my daughter down with you?” cried Mrs. Kilgour.
“You'd better not talk about dragging down,” he shouted, passionately. “I didn't steal for myself. Give me your love, Kate! Give me yourself to encourage me, and I'll get out of the scrape somehow. I'll find ways. But if you don't come with me I won't have the courage or the desire to fight my way through. I'll not disgrace you if you marry me—I swear I will not! With you to protect from everything I'll make good. Symonds Dodd is my uncle. He won't see the family name pulled in. But you must marry me!”
“And if I do not?” she asked.
“We'll all go to damnation together. I don't care! I'll blow it all. I won't be disgraced alone because of something I did for your mother. I may sound like a cur. I don't care, I say! I'm going to have you, and I don't care how I get you!”
“We need not be so dramatic,” said the girl. Some wonderful influence seemed to be controlling her. “Mother, stop your noise and go and sit in that chair. You demand, do you, Mr. Dodd, that to save my mother from exposure as a woman who has stolen, I must be your wife?”
“I do.”