"He must be allowed to run away. You can work that up. The affair can be kept between yourself, Sargent, and Alden, and when the latter is exposed you can feign sympathy, telling him if he will leave at once the affair will remain a secret. Yes, you can even offer to loan him the money to pay the deficiency. Make the evidence so strong against him that he cannot possibly see a way of escape, and if I know anything of human nature he will run away rather than be exposed."
"Suppose he should first see my daughter, and she should advise him to remain and face the danger."
"It must be done when she is absent from home. You must find some pretence to send your wife and daughter on a visit to friends, or else send them to New York."
"You are a shrewd fellow, Mannis, and no mistake."
"A shrewd rogue, you mean."
"No, I do not. In this affair I am but doing the duty that a father owes to his child. She is in danger of being sacrificed to an adventurer who only wants her father's money. But she shall be saved."
The plotters talked a while longer about the matter; then Senator Hamblin withdrew, and Mannis said to himself:
"Now my case does not seem as desperate as it did."
And as Senator Hamblin stepped into the street, he said:
"I don't like this affair at all, but I am losing heavily, and the ventures I have lately made have turned out bad. Mannis' fortune added to my own will save me from disaster. Poor Belle must be temporarily made unhappy, but when she finds herself the wife of Hon. Walter Mannis perhaps she will thank me for saving her."