"Leonie, for God's sake——"
Miss Chandler had interrupted, but Leonie talked on as though unaware of it.
"He was fond of a cousin of yours, but not of you. The cousin's name was Lynde Pyne. He had been brought up to look upon himself as your uncle's heir, a fact of which you were unable to see the justice. You were determined that such should not be the case. You, therefore, went systematically to work to alienate the affection of your uncle from his favorite nephew, pouring into his ears a tale of the treachery of Lynde Pyne that finally had the desired effect—that of causing your uncle to make a new will, leaving to you the bulk of his fortune."
"It seems to me that for a young woman whom I never saw before in my life, you are wonderfully well acquainted with my affairs."
"Poor girls need money as well as other people, and some of us have learned from men that the easiest way to obtain it, is often to discover the private affairs of men of millions like yourself, and trade upon the knowledge that we have gained."
"And how do you propose to handle this?"
"That is just what I am going to tell you."
She turned for a moment and looked at her sister. She was standing with her back leaning against the door, her face deadly white, her eyes glaring like those of an animal.
It was a desperate case with her, but there seemed absolutely nothing that she could do to avert the terrible danger that threatened her.
A weakness came over Leonie, the weakness that is engendered by human sympathy for a person in distress, but then a consideration of all that Miss Chandler had done against her wiped it out, and she turned her eyes in the direction of Kingsley with a little shudder of horror.