"I suppose he can." The words came sulkily after a long pause.
"You did hire him to destroy Lindsay's reputation."
"Lindsay had no business here in New York. He was disturbing Bee's peace of mind. I wanted to get rid of him and send him home."
"So you paid a crooked scoundrel who hated him to murder his reputation."
"That's not what I call it," defended the clubman.
"It doesn't matter what you call it. The fact stands."
"I told him explicitly—again and again—that there was to be no violence. I intended only to show him up. I had a right to do it."
Whitford got up and walked up and down the room. He felt like laying hands on this well-dressed scamp and throwing him out of the office. He tasted something of his daughter's sense of degradation at ever having been connected with a man of so little character. The experience was a bitterly humiliating one to him. For Bee was, in his opinion, the cleanest, truest little thoroughbred under heaven. The only questionable thing he had ever known her to do was to engage herself to this man.
Colin came to a halt in front of the other.
"We've got to protect you, no matter how little you deserve it. I can't have Bee's name dragged into all the papers of the country. The case against Durand will have to be dropped. He's lost his power anyhow and he'll never get it back."