Martin left the room and went to the kitchen in search of Mrs. Leland. Hume came to the window where Helga was standing. "So you are a friend of Red Shandon's, are you?" he said bluntly. "Am I?" The lift of her brows asked him very plainly what he meant by that and what business it was of his. "Yes," he retorted a little warmly, perhaps for the mere reason that her very carriage hinted at a will ready to cross swords with his, and Sledge Hume was not a man to tolerate opposition in a woman. "You told him that the mortgage had been foreclosed." "Did I?" coolly. "And, if you care to know," he went on roughly, "you have thereby piled up a lot of trouble for your friend Shandon." There was rare impudence in the laughter with which she answered him. "I have a way of judging a man when I first see him," she said, her smile now flashing her amusement at him. "I didn't think that you were going to be as stupid as the rest." "What do you mean?" "I mean," and she turned back to the window, "that what happens to Shandon or any other man in the world is absolutely immaterial so far as I am concerned. Please don't think that I'm a tender hearted little thing who is going to cry if you slap another man's face." "You mean that you are not a friend of Shandon?" cynically. "Your way of opening a conversation with a woman you have just met is charmingly unique! If you are trying to get something out of me you are going the wrong way about it, aren't you? You have already let out twice as much as I have!" "Have I?" "Yes. You have told me that there was a mortgage of which I knew nothing; that it has been concealed from Shandon; that he has learned about it; that it upsets your kettle of fish in some way; that you are going to make things hot for him because of it. All that is a good deal of information to give a stranger in less than a minute's time, don't you think, Mr. Hume?" He laughed and yet his eyes hardened and narrowed upon her. "You are welcome to what I have told you," he retorted. "It will be common talk in twenty-four hours." She gave no sign of having heard. Her indifference vaguely irritated him. "Look here, Miss Hazleton," he said significantly. "I'll tell you something else as long as I am pouring out my heart to you," a sneer under the words. "Before I'm done with Shandon he won't have a boot for his foot or a leg to walk on. And anybody who ties up with him is going to get smashed the same way!" "It is very kind of you to warn me beforehand," she laughed softly. "The fact that I have no interest whatever in Mr. Shandon certainly should not lessen my gratitude to you, should it?" "You want me to believe that?" "Really there is only one thing which I do want you to believe," she said in return. "Just that it would be very strange if I should care one way or the other what you think. Isn't it perfectly glorious the way the sun strikes the snow?"