"Perhaps you can also explain that affair with Hilliard. If so, you had better do it. I suppose you didn't know anything about that, either. I suppose you don't know why he advanced that loan after once refusing it. They have a name for men like you who take money from women of her sort."
Emerson uttered a terrible cry, and his face blanched to a gray pallor.
"Do you mean to say—I sent—her—to Hilliard?"
"Hilliard as good as told me so himself. Do you wonder that I am willing to spend a fortune to protect my girl from a man like you? I'm going to break you. I've got a foothold in this enterprise of yours, and I'll root you out if it takes a million. I'll kick you back into the gutter, where you belong."
Boyd stood appalled at the violence of this outburst. The man seemed insane. He could not find words to answer him.
"You did not come down here to tell me that," he said, at last.
"No. I came here with a message from Mildred; she has told me to dismiss you once and for all."
"I shall take my dismissal from no one but her. I can explain everything."
"I expected you to say that. If you want her own words, read this." With shaking fingers, he thrust a letter before Emerson's eyes. "Read it!"
The young man opened the envelope, and read, in a hand-writing he knew only too well: