“Keep cool,” advised Blake. “It’s only twenty-five dollars, and you might have missed anyway.”
“Not with my automatic,” snapped Ashton. “You needn’t sneer about the money. You’ve seen times when you’d have been glad of a chance at half the amount.”
“That’s true,” gravely agreed the engineer. “What’s more, I realize that it is far harder for you than it ever was for me. I want to tell you I admire the way you have stood your loss.”
“You do?” burst out the younger man. “I want to tell you I don’t admire the way you ruined me––babbling 193 to my father––when you promised to keep still! You sneak!”
Blake looked into the other’s furious face with no shade of change in his grave gaze. “I have never said a word to your father against you,” he declared.
“Then––then how, after all this time––?” stammered Ashton, even in his anger unable to disbelieve the engineer’s quiet statement. He was disconcerted only for the moment. Again he flared hotly: “But if you didn’t, old Leslie must have! It’s all the same!”
“No, it is not the same,” corrected Blake. “As for my father-in-law, if he said anything about––the past, I feel sure it was not with intention to hurt your interests.”
“Hurt my interests! You know I am utterly ruined!”
“On the contrary, I know you are not ruined. You have lost a large allowance, and a will has been made cutting you off from a great many millions that you expected to inherit. But you have landed square on your feet; you have a pretty good job, and you are stronger and healthier than you were.”
“If you break up Mr. Knowles’ range with your irrigation schemes, I stand to lose my job. You know that.”