Then the temper she had been trying to control broke loose, and carried all before it. "You base fellow!" she cried, "you traitor to all good! You are unworthy of the country, the home, and the business you desert. I am ashamed to have brought you into the world. To surrender everything for a creature like your runaway wife is monstrously wicked--is incredibly shameful!" "If I could surrender more for Theodora, I would gladly do it, so that I might atone for what I, and you, made her suffer. And she has not taken me to California--you drove her there." "I'm gey glad I did." "And as she will not come back here, I must go to her there. Your own work, mother." "Very good. I accept it. I'm proud o' it." "My dear mother----" "Stop palavering! You can cut out 'dear.'" "Let us talk reasonably. I came here to ask whether you will remain a shareholder in the works, or withdraw your money?" "I'll withdraw every bawbee out o' them. Your sisters can do as they like. And may I ask, what you are going to do? Become a miner, and carry a pick and a dinner-pail? That would be a proper ending for Robert Campbell." "I am going to join my brother David in a banking business in San Francisco." "Your brother David! Your brother David! So he is in California, too? _Dod!_ I might have known it--the very place for the like o' him." "He is one of the princes of Californian finance. He dwells in a palace. He is worth many millions of dollars." "_Dollars!_" and she spit the word out of her mouth with inexpressible scorn--"dollars! what kind o' money is that? I wouldn't gie you a copper half-penny for your dollar." "A dollar is worth just one hundred half-pennies." "I'm not believing you. Why should I? And pray how did you foregather wi' your runawa' brother?" "He is Theodora's neighbor, and she is educating his daughters." "And pray how did Dora happen on your brother? It is a vera singular coincidence, and I am no believer in coincidences. If the truth were known, they have all o' them been carefully planned, and weel arranged." "She met my brother here in Glasgow." "She did nothing o' the kind." "She met him at the Oliphants'." "Oh, oh! I see, I see! The dark man so often riding about wi' Mistress Oliphant was your brother?" "He was my brother David, and he was also McNab's foster-son." "Great heavens! What a fool Margaret Campbell has been for once! To think o' Flora McNab making a mock o' me. She told me he was her son." "So he was, in a way. McNab suckled him, and mothered him, as well as she could. She was the only mother he had." "You lie, Robert Campbell. I was his mother." "You ought to be proud of it." "Is his wife alive or dead?" "She is dead. He will marry again soon." "Some of the Oliphant kin, I suppose?" "No. She is not a Scotchwoman." "I hope to goodness she isn't English." "She is Spanish-American, a great beauty, and almost as rich as David himself."