It was so dark Meg could not see his face, but she knew he was terribly in earnest. She sat silently musing several moments until he exclaimed irritably:
"Why don't you say something? You used to be as much up for the plan as I was."
"Things are different now, Jack," she answered in a troubled tone, and when he questioned her she told him the story of the night when the old miser had brought Nita to Gray Gables as his ward.
"Now, Jack, you know you can defy anybody in the world except old Miser Farnham, and you daren't do that. He claims her now, and all you can do is to let her go back up yonder to Gray Gables and queen it over us again," she ended bitterly.
She was frightened at the terrible explosion of wrath that followed her words. The man raved and stormed, and she, although a fury to every one else, cowered in silence under his wrath. She knew that in spite of himself he must yield to the mysterious power the old miser held over them both. From the cot where he lay half-dead in Bellevue, he seemed to reach out a hand in grim menacing that cowed burly Jack Dineheart into instant, though grumbling, obedience.
"If I had known this I would have drowned Nita in the sea before I would have brought her back here," he growled.
But when Meg proposed to take the girl immediately back to Gray Gables, he did not interpose the least objection. The woman unlocked the cabin-door and entered, finding Nita sobbing hysterically upon the old ragged lounge.
"Dry up that sniveling, girl, and come along with me up to Gray Gables!" she cried roughly.
Nita sprang up in trembling hope.