"Then you were not successful in your search?" Mr. Goddard remarked, dropping his lids to hide the flash of satisfaction that leaped into his eyes at the words.
"No, and yes. I found out that she arrived safely in New York, where she was met by a young lawyer—Royal Bryant by name—who immediately spirited her away to some place after dodging the policeman I had set on her track. I surmise that he has put her in the care of some of his own friends. I went to him and demanded that he tell me where she was, but I might just as well have tried to extract information from a stone as from that astute disciple of the law—blast him! He finally intimated that my room would be better than my company, and that I might hear from him later on."
"Ah! he has doubtless taken her case in hand—she has chosen him as her attorney," said Mr. Goddard.
"It looks like it," snapped the young man; "but he will not find it an easy matter to free her from me; the marriage was too public and too shrewdly managed to be successfully contested."
"It was the most shameful and dastardly piece of villainy that I ever heard of," exclaimed Gerald Goddard, indignantly, "and—"
"And you evidently intend to take the girl's part against me," sneered his companion, his anger blazing forth hotly. "If I remember rightly, you rather admired her yourself."
"I certainly did; she was one of the purest and sweetest girls I ever met," was the dignified reply. "Emil, you have not a ghost of a chance of supporting your claim if the matter comes to trial, and I beg that you will quietly relinquish it without litigation," he concluded, appealingly.
"Not if I know myself," was the defiant retort.
"But that farce was no marriage."
"All the requirements of the law were fulfilled, and I fancy that any one who attempts to prove to the contrary will find himself in deeper water than will be comfortable, in spite of your assertion that I 'have not a ghost of a chance.'"