"If you have done what I think you have done, what I might have known you would do, I shall punish you terribly—you and her!"
"You may punish me all you like, but you shall not punish her!" I said with her own emphasis.
"Reginald promised me some papers to-night—my father had asked me to get them for him. She does not know, this cousin of mine, what they are, what her father is! It is left for you to bring the shame upon her."
"It had better be I than you, in your present frame of mind!"—and the pity welled in my heart. I must save her from the heartache that lay in the truth. If I failed in this I should fail indeed.
"Do you want her to know that her father is a forger—a felon? That is what you are telling her, if you trick Reginald into giving her those papers he was to give me for my father!"
"She hasn't those papers. I have them. They are in my pocket, quite safe from all of you. You are altogether too vindictive, you Holbrooks! I have no intention of trusting you with such high explosives."
"Reginald shall take them away from you. He is not a child to be played with—duped in this fashion."
"Reginald is a good fellow. He will always love me for this—"
"For cheating him? Don't you suppose he will resent it? Don't you think he knows me from every other girl in the world?"
"No, I do not. In fact I have proved that he doesn't. You see, Miss Holbrook, he gave her the documents in the case without a question."