You have wasted the money on fine feathers for your back. I have kept
still. You can't pay me. I've got to struggle out of the mess as best
I can. But, by the eternal gods, there's something coming to me, and
that's your daughter. Now are you going to wake up?"

"I'll do everything I can." Her tone was not convincing, however.

He realized that this woman with the pulpy conscience and the artificial
emotions, selfish and a coward, was merely vaguely stirred by his
revelation, not spurred by the extent of his sacrifice in her behalf.

"Do what you _can_? Whine to me like that after I have stolen state's
money and am standing under my steal? What if this state tips over
politically and they investigate the treasury? I tell you, Mrs. Kilgour,
I deserve to have Kate. I'm going to have her. You have got to fix
it--and right away."

"But I can't marry off a girl of twenty as if she were a Chinese slave."
His insistence caused her to display more of her pettish resentment.

"If you can't deliver the goods, Mrs. Kilgour, I shall take a hand in
it."

"How?"

"I'll tell her the story."

"You wouldn't dare."

"She has a sense of honor and of obligation even if you haven't. She
will pay. She'll pay with herself. That's a devil of a way to get a
wife, but if that's the only way I'll take it."

"But you have just owned up that you have embezzled money. As Kate's
mother it's my duty to protect her from disgrace."

That amazing declaration fairly took away Dodd's breath.

By the manner in which the woman now looked at him it was plain that he
had sunk in her estimation.

"You know, Richard, a mother feels called on to protect a good
daughter."

He got up and stamped on the floor in his passion and swore.

"I appreciate what you did for me--but, really, I didn't ask you to
steal money--and I supposed your uncle was always liberal with you. You
should not have told me falsehoods."

The maddening feature of this calm assumption of superiority was the
fact that the woman seemed really to believe for the moment exactly what
she was saying and to forget why Dodd had jeopardized his fortunes; her
manner showed her shallow estimate of the situation.

"There's another way of doing it," raged the young man, infuriated by
this repudiation of obligation. "I'll blow the whole thing about the two
of us--and she'll be glad enough to have me after it's all over."

"You haven't any right to bring all this trouble and disgrace in