There was a long silence. Giles Ilingsworth was the first to break it.
"Miss Braine, I've been trying to figure out some way so that we can all take care of each other. We all seem to need looking after. Perhaps my courage and strength will come back now that my own little girl has been returned to me. I've got to make a home for her, you see—there'll be a place there for you, too, always, if you'll come."
Madeline had not expected so much kindness, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks.
"May we come in?" asked a voice at the door.
And Leslie Wilkinson, a new light in her face—a light that was worth while, for she had solved a weighty problem in the last half-hour—once more entered, Beekman following close at her heels.
"There are some things I wish to say to ex-Governor Beekman in the presence of you all—some things that you don't know, though I've heard some of you charge my father with them," she went on, her face paling. "I learned the truth myself less than a month ago, Eliot," now turning to him, "that somewhere and somehow there are standing in my name securities amounting to a hundred million dollars. I know it's so—I can testify to it—they don't belong to me."
"They belong to Wilkinson," broke in Ilingsworth. "I've known it all along, but I've never been able to prove it."
"They don't belong to my father," went on Leslie, her eyes meeting Beekman's in triumph, "but to the depositors in my father's trust companies."
Beekman looked at the girl in amazement, Ilingsworth muttered something to himself and was about to speak, but Leslie interrupted him.