Mildred.”
With swimming eyes she read the cold, brief lines, and then, as she reflected that in a moment of desperation Lawrence might offer himself to Lilian, and so be lost to her forever, she laid her head upon the table and moaned:
“I cannot, cannot send it.”
“Yes you can, Gipsy, be brave,” came from the Judge, who for a moment had been standing behind her. “Show Bobum that you have pluck.”
But Mildred cared more for Lawrence Thornton than for pluck, and she continued weeping bitterly, while the Judge placed the letter in the envelope, thinking to himself:
“It’s all-fired hard, I s’pose, but hanged if she shall have him, after Bob said what he did. I’ll buy her a set of diamonds though, see if I don’t, and next winter she shall have some five hundred dollar furs. I’ll show Bob Thornton whether I mean to give her a few thousands or not, the reprobate!”
And finishing up his soliloquy with a thought of the mortgages he was going to foreclose, he sealed the letter, jammed it into his pocket, and passing his great hand caressingly over the bowed head upon the table, hurried away to the post-office.
CHAPTER XIV.
WHAT FOLLOWED.
