, then, to go
forth and assist in the castigation. You have my permission,--and Anne's, I
may add,--to say to the world that I have told you plainly why this
marriage is to take place. It is no secret. It isn't improbable that your
grandfather will consent to back you up in your denunciation. He is that
kind of a man. He has no illusions. Permit me to remind you, therefore,
that neither you nor the world is to take it for granted that we are
hoodwinking Mr. Thorpe. Have I made myself quite clear to you, Braden?"

The young man drew a deep breath. His tense figure relaxed. "I did not
know there were such women in the world as you, Mrs. Tresslyn. There were
heartless, soulless women among the Borgias and the Medicis, but they
lived in an age of intrigue. Their acts were mildly innocuous when
compared with--"

"I must ask you to remember that you are in my home, Braden," she
interrupted, her eyes ablaze.

"Oh, I remember where I am, perfectly," he cried. "It was in this very
room that Anne promised to become my wife. It was here that you gave your
consent, less than a year ago."

He had been pacing the floor, back and forth across the space in front of
the fireplace, in which logs were blazing on this raw February afternoon.
Now he stopped once more to face her resolutely.

"I insist that it is my right to see Anne," he said. His eyes were
bloodshot, his cheek pallid. "I must hear from her own lips that she no
longer considers herself bound to me by the promise made a year ago. I
demand that much of her. She owes it to me, if not to herself, to put an
end to the farce before she turns to tragedy. I don't believe she
appreciates the wickedness of the thing she is about to do. I insist that
it is my right to speak with her, to urge her to reconsider, to point out
to her the horrors of--"

"She will not see you, Braden," broke in the mother, finality in her
voice.

"She _must_ see me," he shouted. "If not to-day, to-morrow; if not then,
some other day, for, by the Eternal, Mrs. Tresslyn, I intend to speak with
her if I have to wait until the accursed day you have selected,--at the
very altar, if necessary. She shall not go into this thing until she has
had the final word with me, and I with her. She does not know what she is
doing. She is carried away by the thought of all that money--Money! Good
God, Mrs. Tresslyn, she has told me a hundred times that she would marry
me if I were as poor as the raggedest beggar in th