The judge, still regarding her with smouldering eyes, bent his head slowly.
“I do. I told you so before I got Mackay. I mean it! What did that fellow write you, what did he say, to make my daughter behave like this?”
She stood her ground firmly now, though she was still very pale.
“It wasn’t Arthur’s letter, it was—something else.”
“What else?”
The judge’s words snapped like a whip; his rage against Faunce was deepening to fury now. It was too much to see the power that coward had to make his daughter wretched. He meant to break it, he would break it, but first—he must break Diane’s will, he saw that!
“I told you I had seen Overton,” she replied slowly, speaking with an effort, as if the words were painful. “It was Overton—who made me see it all, see it so plainly that I couldn’t think why I’d—I’d ever been blind!”
“Overton?” the judge was bewildered. “Why, the man’s in love with you, Di!”
She bent her head at that, tears in her eyes.
“I know it,” she spoke so low that her words were almost inaudible, “that’s why I—I saw it all so plainly. I’m not that kind of a woman!”