A GUARDED CONFERENCE
With flaming eyes Winifred Waverly whirled upon her uncle.
"Why do you suffer it?" she cried hotly. "The man knows that I was not deceived by his idiotic mask, he knows that I have told you, and still you let him go free where he pleases, swagger about with brawlers like that horrible Kid Bedloe, and dribble your money over the bars for drink and over the poker tables! Why do you suffer it?"
A fleeting smile of deep satisfaction brightened Pollard's eyes. They had ridden home in silence and now, with the door barely closed behind them, she had turned upon him with her indignant question.
"I am waiting," began Pollard.
"Waiting for what?" she demanded. "Until he can have had time to squander what is rightfully yours, until there be no chance of getting it back or bringing such a man to justice!"
"You little fire-eater!" he laughed at her. "Come with me in here." He turned and led the way into the room just off the hall and at the front of the house where he had his office. When the door was closed behind him he dropped into a chair, his face a little white and drawn from the exertion of his ride, the first he had had since the girl had come. "I want to talk with you, and I don't want anybody, Mrs. Riddell in particular, to overhear. She's too fond of talking."
Winifred stood across the room from him, her quirt in her hand switching restlessly at the carpet, her eyes showing a little sympathy for his illness but more anger at Buck Thornton.
"You ask why I don't bring that man to reckoning, and I tell you that I am waiting. Then you ask, for what?" He leaned a little forward, and she saw again in his eyes the look she had surprised there on that first day she had come to Hill's Corners, a look of hate and of a sinister satisfaction. "Waiting for the time when I am sure there will be no loophole for him to crawl through! You are ready to go into a court room and swear that he robbed you; that is a great deal and it will go a long way toward convicting him. But it isn't enough. It's only your word against his; don't you see? He will swear that he did not rob you, won't he? We can prove that you left Dry Town with the five thousand dollars; we might even prove that you didn't bring it on to me. But we couldn't prove, beyond the last shadow of doubt, that you didn't lose it, or that somebody else didn't rob you of it."
"But," she asked, frowning in her perplexity, "what good will it do to wait?"