"If I've thrown the man over!" quoted Violet angrily, when they were alone in her father's own private `den,' "of course you are sure to take his part." "I must know what `his part' is before taking it or not. You women always expect us to hang a man first and try him afterwards; or rather to hang him on your sweet evidence alone, and not try him at all." "Oh, father, please don't talk to me in that horrid tone," restraining with vast effort the paroxysm of sobbing which threatened, and which she knew would only irritate him. "I am not feeling so extra happy, I can tell you." "Well, get it over then. What has Lamont done?" "I can't marry a coward." "Eh? A coward? Lamont? Have you taken leave of your senses, girl?" "Well, listen. You shall hear," she said crisply. And then she gave him an account of the whole affair. "Is that all?" he said when she had done. "All?" "Yes. All?" "Yes, it is. I don't see what more there could be. I urged him to try and save the boy, and he refused. Refused!" "And, by the Lord, he was right!" cried the Squire. "The answer he gave you was absolutely the right one, my child. If it had been yourself you'd have seen how he'd have gone in, but for a man of Lamont's strong common-sense to go and throw away his life for a gallows' brat that has only been fished out of the mere to be hanged later on in due course-- why, I'm glad he's justified the good opinion I had of him." "Then, father, you think he was justified in refusing to save life under any circumstances?" said Violet, very white and hard. There was no fear of her breaking down now. The fact of her father siding so entirely with her cast-off lover was as a tonic. It hardened and braced her. "Certainly I do. He gave you the right answer, and on your own showing you insulted him--taking advantage of being a woman--several times over, for the fun of a squalid rabble that I am fool enough to allow to come and disport themselves on my property; but I'll have them all cleared off tomorrow. Coward, indeed! Lamont a coward! No--no. That won't do. I know men too well for that." "Then he was a brute instead," retorted Violet, lashing herself into additional anger, as a dismal misgiving assailed her that she might have made a hideous and lifelong error of judgment. "A coldblooded, calculating brute, and that's just as bad."