After his brother's death he had given up his own room across the hall and moved into the one Victor had occupied. Dr. Semple had urged him to give up the suite and go somewhere else, but with an obstinacy which was a part of the man he refused. On the floor was still the dark spot made by Victor De Jarnette's life blood. His brother would never even have the carpet changed. Only the luxurious furnishings of the room had given place to the plain office furniture of the room across the hall. It was here that he received Margaret. If he had planned her coming he would have received her here. It was the first time she had been in the room since the day her husband lay dead on the floor. Instinctively her eyes sought the place, and Richard De Jarnette watching her closely, saw a shudder pass through her. The same expression of horror that convulsed her features that day came over them again. It was but momentary, however. She had come here for a purpose and she was not to be deterred. She threw her soul into that plea. "You come to me here," he said at length, in a tone that promised little--"in this room--to urge the setting aside of my dead brother's will?" "Why should I not? You know he had no right to make such a will--no moral right." "He had a legal right," he said, cruelly. "On that I stand." Then looking at her fixedly and speaking with slow emphasis as if weighing every word and giving her time to do the same: "Had he been permitted to live out his life he might, himself, have changed the provisions of that will--have rescinded that which you feel to be cruel and unnatural--that which I do not say was _not_ cruel and unnatural. But--" his eyes sought the brown spot on the floor, and hers followed them,--"before he could do this his life was cut off--" "By his own hand," she protested. "--and the possibility of undoing what he had done was wrested from him. Well! Let it stand." She looked at him as if she were trying to fathom his meaning. But his face was inscrutable. Then she rose. "I have made my last appeal to you," she said. "It is useless to humiliate myself further. I came here hoping against hope that having vindicated before the world your legal right to the guardianship and custody of my child, you might then be so just, so generous, as to give him back into the keeping of his natural guardian. But I have overrated you." He surprised her by a reply to this. "Did it ever occur to you," he asked quietly, "that you might have underrated me?" "No. Never." "Suppose for one moment--for purposes of argument only--that I am not the black-hearted thing you think me--that I would not drag shrieking children from their mother's breasts for the mere pleasure of the thing--can you then conceive no reason why I should feel that I and not you--_you_--" he was looking searchingly at her now, his eyes narrowing and concentrating their gleam upon her face--"should have the keeping of my dead brother's child?"