It is the terrible part of stereotyped situations that people will make use of the stereotyped expressions that go with them. Mr. Ladd was the kindest and most devoted father on earth, yet the venerable formula rose to his lips: "You defy me under my own roof?"
It of course forced out the stereotyped reply: "I can leave it."
Mr. Ladd, in silence, looked at her long and steadily; then he bent his head. She saw nothing but the iron-gray hair; the stooping, dejected shoulders; the hand, lying as limp as dead, on the damask cloth.
"Papa?"
No answer.
"Papa?"
She ran to his side, all revolt gone, her only thought to comfort him. Her bare arms entwined themselves about his neck in a paroxysm of remorse; her bosom swelled; her voice was incoherent as she lavished her young tenderness upon him. It was a moment that would decide her life. Had her father left the initiative to her, had he been content to accept mutely these tokens of her surrender--he would have won, then and there, and nothing again would ever have come between them. But with blind stupidity he had to persevere with the intention their clash had interrupted.
"I will tell you my real reason for wanting you to get away," he said. "It wasn't what you thought at all--it was to spare you unnecessary pain. Last night I sent Reynolds, our best secret-service man, to New York with carte blanche to confer with the Pinkertons and ransack this fellow's record from top to bottom. From what Reynolds told me he already knew--I mean what's said down-town, I believe it will be a black one, so black that there won't be any question about your giving him up--just on the facts brought out--facts that can not be disproved or contested. Reynolds--"
"But, Papa, I don't understand. You are setting detectives to go back over his life, like a criminal? Detectives?"
"Yes."