"Oh!" said Zoe, "what a pity! And I was going to ask you to buy me two new hats!"
Her father looked at her long and earnestly.
"You haven't got any proper kind of balance where money is concerned, Zoe," he drawled. "Your brain pod ain't burstin' with financial genius. You don't seem to care worth a baked bean that I'm bein' fleeced of thousands! That hog Bablon cleaned me out a level million dollars when he burned the Runek Mills, and now I know, plain as if I saw him, he's got me booked for another pile! Where d'you suppose money comes from? D'you think I can grab out like a coin manipulator, and my hand comes back full of dollars?"
Zoe made no reply. She was staring, absently, over her father's head, into a dream-world. Had Mr. Oppner been endowed with the power to read from another's eyes, he would have found a startling story written in the beautiful book fringed by Zoe's dark lashes. She was thinking of Séverac Bablon; thinking of him, not as a felon, but as he had been depicted to her by the strange man whom she had met at Lord Vignoles'—the man who pursued him, yet condoned his sins.
Her father's sandy voice broke in upon her reverie:
"Where I'm tied up—same with Rohscheimer and the rest—I don't know this thief Bablon when I see him."
"No," said Zoe. "Of course."
Mr. Oppner stared. His daughter's attitude was oddly unemotional, wholly detached and impersonal.
"H'm!" he grunted dryly. "I've got to see Alden, the Agency boy, upstairs. I'll be pushing off."
He "pushed off."