"Sit right down here now, and let's talk the matter over--if you want to go home to the old gent, why I'm sure I have no objection, providing he agrees to take your hubby along with you. There'll be a scene of course--we may expect that--but when you tell him how you love me, and couldn't live without me and all that--and mind, you put it on heavy--it will end by his saying: 'Youth is youth, and love goes where it is sent. I forgive you, my children; come right back to the paternal roof--consider it yours in fact.' And when the occasion is ripe, you could suggest that the old gent start your hubby in business. Your wish would be law; he might demur a trifle at first, but if you stuck well to your point he'd soon cave in and ask what figure I'd take to--" "Stop!--stop right where you are, you mercenary wretch!" cried Faynie in a ringing voice. "I see it all now--as clear as day. You--you--have married me because you have believed me my father's heiress, and--" "You couldn't help but be, my dear," he hiccoughed. "An only child--no one else on earth to come in for his gold--couldn't help but be his heiress, you know--couldn't disinherit you if he wanted to. You've got the old chap foul enough there, ha, ha, ha!" "You seem to have suddenly lost sight of the fact that there is some one beside myself--my stepmother and her daughter Claire." He fell back a step and looked at her with dilated eyes--despite the brandy he had imbibed he still understood thoroughly every word she was saying. "A stepmother--and--another daughter!" he cried, in astonishment--almost incoherently. "You seem to forget that you always used to say to me--that you hoped they were well," said Faynie with deepening scorn in her clear, young voice. "Oh--ah--yes," he muttered, "but you see I was not thinking of them---only of you," and deep in his heart he was cursing the hapless cousin--whom he believed dead by this time--for not mentioning that the girl had a stepmother and sister. "Had you taken the time to listen to something else that I had to tell you, you might have reconsidered the advisability of eloping with me in such haste," went on the girl in her clear, ringing tones, "for it has become apparent to me--with even as little knowledge of the world as I possess--that you are a fortune hunter--that most despicable of all creatures--but in this instance your dastardly scheme has entangled your own feet. Your well-aimed arrow has missed the mark. You have wedded this night a penniless girl. An hour before you met me at the arched gate my father disinherited me, and when he has once made up his mind upon any course of action--nothing human, nothing on earth or in heaven would have power enough to induce him to change it." The effect of her words were magical upon him. With a bound he was at her side grasping her slender wrists with so tight a hold that they nearly snapped asunder.