"Yes. You said that yourself and Hume had inherited equal interests in the Dry Lands. That through letters Hume had persuaded you to sell your interest to him. After you had sold you began to think that he had japped you. You wanted to know from me what the property was actually worth."
"I am glad that you remember. You answered my letter. You told me that you had always considered the land hardly worth paying taxes on."
"Yes."
"If I asked you now, that same question, what would you say?"
He hesitated. The Dry Lands were no whit more valuable to-day than they had been last year. But if the scheme Hume was engineering went through it would be a different matter.
"You have already sold your interest, given the deed, haven't you, Miss Strawn? What difference does it make?" he asked bluntly.
"What if I have?" she countered coolly. "I am not the sort of woman, Mr. Shandon, to sit with my hands in my lap when a man has done a piece of sharp business with me. I needed the money and like a fool I sold to Hume. And now I know as well as I know anything that he didn't pay me a tenth of what the property was worth. Yes, I have given the deed. You think that I am a fool again to come clear across the continent upon a matter that went out of my hands a year ago!" She laughed, her laugh reminding him unpleasantly of the man of whom they were talking. "You see, you don't know me yet."
"I don't see just how I can be of service to you," he suggested.
"I'll try to be explicit. I have never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Hume and yet I think that I could write a very correct character sketch of the gentleman. Egotism and selfishness, two things in most men, just one in Sledge Hume! He is shrewd and hard and his god is gold. Am I right?"
"Hume is hardly an intimate acquaintance of mine."