"Done!" he cried out bitterly. "That depends on what you mean by the word. I will call it done in six months when you will leave him for good, and he will name his price for a divorce. That's the way adventurers marry money nowadays. They enjoy the girl till they are tired of her, and then sell!"
Phyllis struggled to keep her composure under the affront. "You are very unjust," she returned in a low voice that trembled in spite of herself. "You are determined to think the worst of him, and make it impossible for us ever to be friends. But you are wrong, Papa. He's not an adventurer, nor anything like it. Surely I ought to know better than you, and if I have been willing to love him, and marry him--"
"Oh, I'm not going to argue with you about him," interrupted Mr. Ladd harshly. "You believe in him now, of course. One can't reason with lunatics, and I shan't try. I'll give you six months--perhaps even less--and then I want you to remember what I am saying to you now."
"That you were right?"--Her voice was scornful.--"Oh, Papa, this is unworthy of you."
"Phyllis," he retorted, "that's the last thing on earth I would ever say to you. If you should come back to me disillusioned, broken, utterly weary of the muddle you have made of it all, you will find everything unchanged between us and the whole matter as ignored as though it had never been. That's what you are to remember--that my heart and my purse will never be closed against you."
"Though both are dependent on my giving up my husband?"
"He will give you up, my dear, fast enough."
"How dare you say that, Papa--how dare you!" A mist of anger was in her eyes, and two spots of crimson glowed dangerously on her cheeks. Never in her life had she been more roused; up to that moment she had still hoped to save the day and win her father over, but now she perceived the irrevocable nature of what was being said. Yet outwardly, at least, she restrained herself, and hid within her quivering breast a tumult that seemed to rend her to pieces.
"If I seem to be misjudging Mr. Adair it is only because I know more about him that you do," continued Mr. Ladd in a tone not untinged with a grim satisfaction. Even as he spoke he drew out a thick packet, and unfolded it on his knee. It was a mass of typewriting, with here and there a notorial seal on paper of a different color, and an occasional newspaper cutting neatly pasted in the center of a little sea of comment. "Here we have him in black and white," he went on, "and frankly, Phyllis, he offers you a very poor promise of a happy married life."
"And you expect me on my wedding morning to sit down and read these things--these abominable slanders your detectives have scraped together?"