"You'd better decide to stop," Saunders said, cordially. "I will soon get over my talk with the overseer, and then I'll take you around and show you some of the richest land in the South--black as your hat in some places. I wouldn't give this piece of property for all you and Delbridge and Mitchell ever can pile up. Both my grandfather and father died in the room up-stairs on the left of the hall. It seems sacred to me." Mostyn nodded absently. "No, thanks, I'll walk home," he said, getting out of the buggy. He was turning away, but paused and looked back. "Would you advise--" he began, hesitatingly, "would you advise me to return to Atlanta to-morrow--on--on account of this silly thing?" Saunders hesitated. "I hardly know what to say," he answered, frankly. "Perhaps you can tell better when you have read her letter. The situation is decidedly awkward. In her present nervous condition the woman is likely to give trouble. Somehow I feel that it is nothing but your duty to all of us to do everything possible to prevent publicity. She seems to me to have a dangerous disposition. She even spoke of--of using force. In fact, she said she was armed--spoke of killing you in cold blood. You might restrain her by law, but you wouldn't want to do that." A desperate shadow hovered over Mostyn's face. "I'll go back in the morning," he said, doggedly. "Mitchell, you say, wants to see me. I'm not afraid of the woman. If I had been there she wouldn't have made such a fool of herself." CHAPTER XIII When Mostyn got back to the farmhouse he found no one at home, the entire family being at church. He strolled about the lawn, smoked many cigars, and tried to read a Sunday paper on the porch. His old nervous feeling had him in its grasp. Try as he would to banish them, the things Saunders had told him swept like hot streams through his veins. Mitchell had doubled his fortune; Irene was now a richer heiress than ever; Delbridge was in great luck; and a shallow-pated woman, whom Mostyn both feared and despised, was threatening him with exposure. Mitchell, and other men of the old regime, laughed at the follies of youth, it was true, but a public scandal which would cripple business was a different matter in any man's eyes. Besides, the old man must be told of his intention to marry Dolly, and that surely would be the last straw, for all of Mitchell's intimate friends knew that the garrulous old man was counting on quite another alliance.