"You may shoot, if you like, when I have finished with you, but not before," said Power, when his breathless adversary seemed to be in a fit condition to follow what he was saying. "I am prepared to die, and by your hand if you think fit to be my executioner; but first you must know the penalty. If I do not return to my friend's house before a fixed hour, an exact copy of all that you have read will be sent to the father and uncle of that detestable blackguard you have chosen to marry my daughter. It seems that Italians are blessed with fine-drawn scruples in such matters, and the revelation of a blot in Nancy's parentage will be fatal to your precious project. Copies will also be given to Nancy herself, and to Philip Lindsay. If I know anything of men, I fancy that he, at any rate, will not flout her because of her mother's sin. In the event of my death, she becomes my heiress; so she will be quite independent of your bounty, and, after the first shock and horror of comprehension has passed, I think she has enough of her mother's spirit, and of my fairly strong will, to defy any legal rights you may try to enforce as her reputed father. I am talking with brutal plainness, Marten, because you've got to understand that you are beaten to your knees. Now I'll repeat my terms. Dismiss an unspeakable cad from your house--not forcibly, of course, but with sufficient conviction that he cannot refuse to go--agree to Nancy's marriage with the man of her choice--and she should wait another year, at least, whether or not Lindsay be the man--and I burn everything, copies and originals, on her wedding day. Refuse, and you know the sure outcome. There is your pistol. It should do its work well at this short range. Shoot, if you must! I am ready!" CHAPTER XX THE PASSING OF THE STORM Marten's hand closed round the butt of the pistol, and, during a few seconds, Power thought that he was a doomed man. Even in England, a land where deeds of violence are not condoned by lawless unwritten law, he knew he was in deadly peril. If Marten shot him, there was reasonable probability that punishment might not follow the crime. His own actions would bear out the contention that Marten had killed him in self-defense. He had palpably forced his way in; the warning letter from the New York lawyers would count against him; legal ingenuity could twist in Marten's favor the very means he was using to safeguard Nancy's child. But he did not fear death. Rather did he look on it as the supreme atonement. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend," and, in giving his life for an innocent girl, he was surely obeying her mother's last request.