"Suppose I decline to let you have it?"
"Then you must take the consequences," he said, quickly.
"What are to be the consequences?" she asked, quietly.
"That you and Althea will be forever separated. She shall never see you again."
He looked at her intently to see the effect of his threat.
Harriet Vernon was as cool and imperturbable as ever.
"Have you been in New York for a week past?" she asked, as he thought, irrelevantly.
"Why do you ask?"
"I have a reason."