"Tell my father that I'm here and will be in presently," she commanded
the guardian.
Before the messenger returned Mayo came in, rather apprehensively. He
tried to avoid her, but she met him face to face and accosted him with
spirit.
"Now that I have put you on your honor, I'm not afraid to have you talk
your business over with my father. Come with me. I will take you to him.
Then we will call accounts square between us."
"Very well," he consented. "After what I have been through here, I feel
that one service matches the other." Mayo followed her and came into The
Presence.
Julius Marston was alone, intrenched behind his desk, on his throne of
business; the dark back of the chair, towering over his head, set off
in contrast his gray garb and his cold face; to Mayo, who halted
respectfully just inside the door, he appeared a sort of bas-relief
against that background--something insensate, without ears to listen or
heart to bestow compassion.
The girl, hurrying to him, engaged his attention until she had seated
herself on the arm of his chair. Then he saw Mayo, recognized him, and
tried to rise, but she pushed him back, urging him with eager appeal.
"You must listen to me, father! It is serious! It is important!"
He groped for the row of desk buttons, but she held his hand from them.
Captain Mayo strode forward, determined to speak for himself, rendered
bold by the courageous sacrifice the girl was making.
"Not a word! Not a word! The supreme impudence of it!" Marston repeated
the last phrase several times with increasing violence. He pushed his
daughter off the arm of the chair and struggled up. Only heroic measures
could save that situation--and the girl knew her father! She forced
herself between him and his desk.
"You'd better listen!" she warned him, hysterically. "A few days ago I
ran away to be married!"
He stood there, stricken motionless, and she put her hands against his
breast and pressed him back into his chair.
"But this is not the man, father!"
Marston had been gathering his voice for wild invective, but that last
statement took away all his power of speech.
"I warned you that you'd better listen!"
In that moment she dominated the situation as completely as if she stood
between the two men with a lighted bomb in her hand.
Mayo was overwhelmed even more completely than the financier. He
realized that her extortion of a pledge from him had been subterfuge;
her triumphant eyes flashed complete information on that point. Both
anger and bewilderment made him incapable of any sane attempt to press
his case with Marston at that time. He turned and started for the door.