Part 24

No answer.

"Papa?"

She ran to his side, all revolt gone, her only thought to comfort him. Her bare arms entwined themselves about his neck in a paroxysm of remorse; her bosom swelled; her voice was incoherent as she lavished her young tenderness upon him. It was a moment that would decide her life. Had her father left the initiative to her, had he been content to accept mutely these tokens of her surrender--he would have won, then and there, and nothing again would ever have come between them. But with blind stupidity he had to persevere with the intention their clash had interrupted.

"I will tell you my real reason for wanting you to get away," he said. "It wasn't what you thought at all--it was to spare you unnecessary pain. Last night I sent Reynolds, our best secret-service man, to New York with carte blanche to confer with the Pinkertons and ransack this fellow's record from top to bottom. From what Reynolds told me he already knew--I mean what's said down-town, I believe it will be a black one, so black that there won't be any question about your giving him up--just on the facts brought out--facts that can not be disproved or contested. Reynolds--"

"But, Papa, I don't understand. You are setting detectives to go back over his life, like a criminal? Detectives?"

"Yes."

"But how dishonorable, how infamous!"

"Oh, it's done every day; it's common, my dear; if the man's straight it can't hurt him--but if he has anything to hide, why, we turn on the search-light, and find out what's wrong.--It's all done secretly; he won't know; don't worry about that.--I expect a full report in a few days, and would rather not have you here when I get it."

"And do you think that's fair or right, or anything but--fiendish?"

"How do you know he isn't married, Phyllis?"--he shot this at her mercilessly. "How do you know anything except what he's told you? You may be willing to believe him, and all that--but I'm your father, and I want to know, and by God, I'm going to know!"

"Papa, don't!"

"Aha, you're not very confident, are you?"

"He's a man. I don't doubt he's been foolish, and bad, and fast, but to see it written down cold-bloodedly on sheets of paper is more than I can bear. I am willing to ignore that; I am willing to take him as he is now. Oh, Papa, a woman can forgive so much."

"Yes, my dear, and a great deal that a father never could."

"I beg you, Papa, I implore you to telegraph to them to stop."

"It's too late--besides it has to be done; I insist on it; I'm going to strip that man's past to the bone."

"Even if it costs you me? Even if this is the end of everything between us?"

"Fiddle-de-dee, these theatrics are unworthy of you! You're going to take the noon train to Sarah's, and behave yourself; and this business, however disagreeable to both of us, has got to go through."

Her lips tightened mutinously. She was not a young woman who could be driven.

"I'll stay here, or walk right out of your house--and you know where."

"Then stay," he cried, rising wrathfully, "and may God forgive you for the misery you are bringing down on me. I'm only trying to do what's best, and you treat me as though I was one of that fellow's cruel parents on the stage! It's no time to mince matters, and I tell you straight out, Phyllis, he's a blackguard and a scoundrel, and when you see the Pinkertons' report, I guess you'll go down on your knees and beg my pardon for your heartlessness and obstinacy."

He glared at her, expecting a retort that would add fresh fuel to his anger, but she was silent, downcast, trembling. The answer she made was to herself, inaudible save to her anguished soul: "Oh, that Saturday night were here!"

*CHAPTER XVI*

The four days that followed were almost unendurable in the strain they entailed. Phyllis was heavy with her secret; beset by emotions so conflicting that they seemed to rend her to pieces; forlorn and desolate under her father's studied coldness. The detectives' report did not come, or was withheld perhaps,--but the apprehension of it was always hanging horribly above her head. It was not the facts themselves she feared most, though she dreaded them, too; it was to hear them tauntingly on her father's lips; to be forced to stand, and listen, and cringe at what the human ferrets had unearthed.--Anxious days; leaden days; sad, introspective, interminable days, never to be recalled in after life without a peculiar depression.

On Saturday, at the stroke of noon, she was in a telephone booth, with shivers cascading down her back, and the eagerest heart in Carthage thumping under her breast. In the time she took to get her number, she had decided to go, not to go--then again to go, then again not to go. It was awful, and she couldn't; it was awful, and she would!

"Hello, is that the St. Charles Hotel?"

"Yes, Chincholchell, whodyerwant?"

"Mr. Cyril Adair?"