Part 65 (1/2)

”I believe her innocent, myself,” he finally replied.

”So she grew up out there in the hills without any friends or social life,” Prentiss commented, musingly.

”There was always a camptender and a sheepherder or two about,” Toomey answered with slurring significance.

Prentiss brushed the ashes from his cigar.

”And Prouty had no sympathy with her in her loneliness, but considered her a legitimate target--somebody that everybody 'took a fall out of,'

you say?”

There was a quality in his voice now which made Toomey glance at the man quickly, but it was so elusive, so faint, that he could not be certain; and rea.s.sured by his impa.s.sive face he went on:

”Why shouldn't they? What would anybody waste sympathy on her kind for?”

His thin lips curled contemptuously.

Again Prentiss sat in the stillness in which not a muscle or an eyelid moved. He seemed even not to breathe until he turned with an impressive deliberateness and subjected Toomey to a scrutiny so searching and prolonged that Toomey colored in embarra.s.sment, wondering the while as to what it meant.

”I presume, Mr. Toomey,” Prentiss finally inquired with a careful politeness he had not shown before, ”that it would mean considerable to you in the way of commissions on the sale of stock if this project went through?”

Toomey's relief that he had not inadvertently given offense was so great that he almost told the truth as to the exact amount. Just in time he restrained himself and replied with elaborate indifference:

”I'd get something out of it for my time and work, of course, but, mostly, I'm anxious to see a friend get hold of a good thing.”

This fine spirit of disinterested solicitude met with no response.

”I presume it's equally true, Mr. Toomey, that the completion of the project means considerable to the town?”

”Considerable!” with explosive vehemence. ”It's got where it's a case of life or death. The coyotes'll be denning in the Security State Bank and the birds building nests in the Opera House in a year or two, if something don't turn up.”

”How soon can you furnish me with the data you may have on hand?”

”About six minutes and four seconds, if I run,” Toomey replied in humorous earnestness.

Prentiss's face did not relax.

”Get it and bring it to my room--at once.” His voice was cold and businesslike, strongly reminiscent now of Kate's.

CHAPTER x.x.x

HER DAY

Kate stood before a teetering k.n.o.bless bureau reflecting upon the singular coincidence which should place her in the same room for her second social affair in the Prouty House as that to which she had been a.s.signed upon her first. The bureau had been new then and, to her inexperienced eyes, had looked the acme of luxurious magnificence. She recalled as vividly as though the lapse of time consisted of days, not years, the round eager face, that had looked out of the gla.s.s.

She had been only seventeen--that other girl--and every emotion that she felt was to be read in her expressive face and in her candid eyes. It was different--the face of this woman of twenty-eight who calmly regarded Kate.

She turned her head and took in the room with a sweeping glance.

It was there, in the middle of the floor, that she had torn off and flung her wreath; it was in the corner over there that she had thrown her bunting dress. On the spot where the rug with the pink child and the red-eyed dog used to be, she had stood with the tears streaming down her cheeks--tears of humiliation, of fierce outraged pride, feeling that the most colossal, crus.h.i.+ng tragedy that possibly could come into any life had fallen upon her.