"Your 'office boy of Lynde Pyne's,' is Leonie Cuyler!" cried the young woman, excitedly. "You must be mad that you could not recognize her through that disguise!"
Mauprat uttered a low growl of rage.
Without a word, but showing his teeth like a ferocious canine, he sprung forward and caught Leonie by the throat.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
It required no great exertion of physical force to bring the boy to his knees.
The breath was almost choked from his body when Ben Mauprat released his hold.
"You cursed little imp of Satan!" he cried, his voice hoarse from rage. "I'll teach you to come here trying to impose upon me. What in thunder do you mean by it? Answer me quickly, or by Heaven! I'll strangle all the life out of your little carcass. Do you hear?"
"I will tell you!" exclaimed Miss Chandler, who had already removed the veil that covered her face. "She has come here to play the spy. She has threatened that unless I break the engagement with Lynde Pyne—which she has somehow discovered to exist—that she will make known the secret of my birth, and of my relationship to you. She is here for the purpose of getting information from you upon that subject."
"And perhaps I should have been fool enough to have said something that might have given it to her, if you had not come in just when you did. So you want to break the engagement that exists between Miss Chandler and Lynde Pyne, do you?"