so
I never even peeped a word to her about my own feelings. And here she
goes, throwing you over like a shot, and spilling everything. Confound it,
man, if I'd thought she could possibly want to marry anybody else but you,
I'd have had my try. The good Lord knows I'm not much, but by thunder, I'm
not decrepit. I--I suppose it was the money, eh?"

"That's for you to say, Simmy; certainly not for me."

"If it's money she's after and not an Adonis, I don't see why the deuce
she didn't advertise. I would have answered in a minute. I can't help
saying it, old man, but I feel sorry for Anne, 'pon my soul, I do. I don't
think she's doing this of her own free will. See what her mother did to
George and that little girl in there? I tell you there's something nasty
and--"

"I may as well tell you that Anne _is_ doing this thing of her own free
will," said Braden gravely.

"I don't believe it," said Dodge.

"At any rate, Simmy, I'm grateful to you for standing clear while there
was still a chance for me. So long! I must be getting up to the hospital,
and then around to see her doctor."

"So long, Brady. See you on Thursday." He meant, good soul, that he would
be at the hospital on that day.

CHAPTER VIII

An hour later, Mr. Simeon Dodge appeared at the home of Anne Tresslyn. In
place of his usual care-free manner there now rested upon him an air of
extreme gravity. This late afternoon visit was the result of an
inspiration. After leaving Thorpe he found himself deeply buried in
reflection which amounted almost to abstraction. He was disturbed by the
persistency of the thoughts that nagged at him, no matter whither his
aimless footsteps carried him. For the life of him, he could not put from
his mind the conviction that Anne Tresslyn was not responsible for her
actions.

He was convinced that she had been bullied, cowed, coerced, or whatever
you like, into this atrocious marriage, and, of course, there could be no
one to blame but her soulless mother. The girl ought to be saved. (These
are Simmy's thoughts.) She was being sacrificed to the greed of an
unnatural mother. Admitting, for the sake of argument, that she was no
longer in love with Braden Thorpe, there still remained the positive
conviction that she could not be in love with any one else, and certainly
not with that treacherous old man in Washington Square. That, of course,
was utterly impossible, so there was but the one alternative: she was
being forc