Tregarvon maintained a stubborn silence for a full minute. Then he denied again, with more heat than the occasion seemed to demand. “I don’t care what evidence you bring. I’ll believe nothing against Richardia; _nothing_, you understand? And, after all, what does it amount to? We agreed this morning that she might blamelessly take an evening drive with Hartridge. The fact that they were driving behind her father’s horse cuts no especial figure that I can see.” “She might have been driving with Hartridge blamelessly; we agree on that. Or even still more blamelessly with--her father.” “Put it in words,” snapped Tregarvon. “Two or three people to whom I have spoken saw them together behind the dapple-gray, her and her father.” “I won’t stand for it!” was the angry retort. “You are hinting that her father is behind these bushwhackings, and that she is a party to them. That doesn’t go!” “That was spoken very much like a lover,” said Carfax slowly. And then: “You mustn’t let your major weakness get away with you, Vance.” “And what do you call my ‘major weakness’?” Tregarvon inquired, with a rasp to the words that made them sound like a challenge. Carfax did not mince matters. “The inability to be off with the old love before you are on with the new,” he said crisply. “Elizabeth has some rights which you ought to respect, don’t you think?” “Go on,” Tregarvon jerked out. “You haven’t said it all.” “No, I haven’t; but I shall say it all. You are a changed man, Vance. Either this coal-mine fight or your infatuation for this young woman, or both, are bringing out the worst there is in you. Don’t you realize it?” “I realize that this is a devil of a world!” was the gritting rejoinder. “First Richardia puts the knife into me and twists it around, and now you’re doing it. I suppose it will be Elizabeth’s turn, next!” “You deserve all that is coming to you, I venture to say,” suggested the mentor evenly. “You are engaged to one woman, and you come here and make love openly to another.” Tregarvon was lost now to all sense of proportion. “I shall do as I please!” he retorted hotly. “If you want to write to Elizabeth, it’s your privilege. If you do, I shall tell her that you’ve had Richardia out in the car twice to my once!” Carfax’s mentor mood slipped away, and he laughed softly. “Miss Richardia is a dear girl, and worthy of the best that any man can give her, Vance,” he said gently. “Somebody ought to save her from the machinations of a William Wilberforce Hartridge, don’t you think? You can’t, you know; and sometimes I’ve wondered if that doesn’t put it pretty squarely up to me.” Tregarvon rose and stood over his friend, and for an instant there were black passions to blaze in the wide-set gray eyes. But there was manhood enough underlying the tumult to enable him to throttle the worst of the impulses.