‘It is as well,’ he said, ‘that this farce should end. In asking your mercy I was only using a form of words in order to pacify you. I recognised that you were suffering, as you yourself have admitted, from a sort of mania, and I took what I thought was the easiest course with you. As to the past, we will not go into that. Your version of it is ridiculously overstated. I shall now leave. In twenty-four hours you will be in prison. You say that the fact of your being in prison will not affect the Princesse contracts. I think it will. I think that when I inform the Stock Exchange Committee that the real mover of those contracts is awaiting his trial as a coiner, the Committee will do something drastic. I might have told you this before, but I wished, if possible, to arrive at an amicable settlement. In offering you two hundred and fifty thousand pounds I fancy I was meeting you more than half-way. Good-day, Mr. Craig; good-day, Mr. Redgrave. And, Mr. Redgrave, have a care how you mix yourself up with this Craig, and, above all, do not take for gospel everything that he says as to my past history.’ Simon Lock made his exit from the room with immense dignity. ‘He is bluffing,’ said Raphael Craig. ‘He is at the end of his tether, and he knows it; but he has bluffed it out very well. The old man smiled happily. ‘You are still prepared to marry Teresa?’ he asked. Richard took Mr. Craig’s hand. CHAPTER XVII--THE CLOSE Would our mother have wished it? These words, uttered in a tone of grave, sad questioning, were followed by a hush among the group which sat under the trees in the orchard that same afternoon. The two mares belonging to Mr. Craig, and Juana’s strawberry roan, were feeding close by, the summer flies their sole trouble. The group consisted of Raphael Craig, the two girls who, as he had said, were his daughters by right of all he had done for them, and Richard. Old Craig had, without any reservation, told Juana and Teresa the history of their mother, and the history of his vengeance on the man who had so cruelly wronged their mother. He explained to them, with a satisfaction which he took no trouble to hide, how Simon Lock, after a career of splendour, was now inevitably doomed to ruin. He told them how for twenty years he had lived solely for the achievement of that moment, and that, now it had come, he was content. But Juana had said, ‘Would our mother have wished it?’ And her phrase reminded Richard of the old man’s phrase to Simon Lock in the morning--‘Hers was a gentle heart.’ The sisters looked at each other, unquiet, irresolute. ‘This Simon Lock is our real father, then?’ said Teresa. ‘Have I not just told you so?’ said the old man. ‘Let him off, father,’ Juana murmured; and Teresa’s eyes, though she said nothing, supported her sister. ‘Why?’ asked Raphael Craig. ‘Surely you despise him too much to notice him. Is not the best punishment for him his own conscience and your silent contempt?’