"If it fails to pass I shall have the land on my hands; if it passes I shall have made something by a venture, and Janey will be the richer; but, as it stands, the venture had better be mine than yours. You have lost enough." Richard gave his hair an excited toss backward, and stared at him as he had done before; a slight, cold moisture broke out on his forehead. "You mean"--he began, breathlessly. "Do you remember," said Tredennis, "what I told you of the comments people were beginning to make? They have assumed the form I told you they would. It is best for--for your children that they should be put an end to. If I assume these risks there will be no farther need for you to use--to exert yourself." He began to look white about the mouth, and through his iron stolidity there was something revealed before which Richard felt himself quail. "The night that Blundel came in to your wife's reception, and remained so short a time, he had heard a remark upon the influence she was exerting over him, and it had had a bad effect. The remark was made publicly at one of the hotels." He turned a little whiter, and the something all the strength in him had held down at the outset leaped to the surface. "I have no wife to--to use," he said; "if I had, by Heavens, I would have spared her!" He had held himself in hand and been silent a long time, but he could not do it now. "She is the mother of your children," he cried, clenching his great hand. "And women are beginning to avoid her, and men to bandy her name to and fro. You have deceived her; you have thrown away her fortune; you have used her as an instrument in your schemes. _I_, who am only an outsider, with no right to defend her--_I_ defend her for her father's sake, for her child's, for her own! You are on the verge of ruin and disgrace. I offer you the chance to retrieve yourself--to retrieve her! Take it, if you are a man!"