“Aha, that’s where you’re wrong. If Ormsby chooses to prosecute, no man can help the young fool. He’s branded forever as a criminal and a felon. Why, if he could inherit his grandfather’s millions, decent people would shut their doors in his face, now.”
“Then, his service to his country counts for nothing,” faltered Dora.
“No; many a man has distinguished himself in the 265 field, but that hasn’t saved him from prison. Dick Swinton is done for. Ormsby will see to that.”
“Vivian is a coward, then, and his action will only show how wise I was to abandon all thought of marrying him.”
“You haven’t abandoned all thought of it. You’re just a silly fool of a girl who won’t take her father’s advice. It is an insult to Ormsby to throw him over for a thieving rascal—”
“Father, you have always prided yourself on being a just man. Yet, you condemn Dick without a hearing.”
“Without a hearing! Haven’t I given him a hearing? I saw him. He had the chance then to deny the charge. His crime is set out in black and white, and he can’t get away from it. No doubt, he thinks he can talk over a silly woman, and scrape his way back to respectable society by marrying my daughter; but no—not if I know it! Marry Dick Swinton, and you go out of my house, never to return. I’ll not be laughed at by my friends and pointed at as a man of loose principles, who allowed his daughter to mate with a blackguard.”
“Father, curb your tongue,” cried Dora, flashing out angrily. Her color was rising, and that determined little mouth, which had excited the admiration of Herresford, was set in a hard, straight line. 266 The colonel was red in the face, and emphasizing his words with his clenched fists, as if he were threatening to strike.
Dora was the first to recover her composure. She turned away with a shrug, and walked out of the room to put an end to the discussion.
Her joy at Dick’s return from the grave was short-lived. The appalling difficulty of the situation was making itself felt. She left the colonel to ramp about the house, muttering, and shut herself in her boudoir, where she proceeded to make short work of everything associated with Vivian Ormsby. His photograph was torn into little pieces; the gifts with which he had loaded her were collected together in a heap; his letters were burned without a sigh. She would have been sorry for him, if he had not conspired with her father to conceal the truth about Dick’s supposed death. She shuddered to think what her position would have been, if she had married Ormsby, and then discovered, when the die was cast, that Dick, her idol, the only one who had touched a responsive chord in her heart, was living, and set aside by fraud.