eral should be
put up for what you have to offer--youth, beauty, charm, health,
culture, family name, desirable and influential connections, social
position of the highest. In exchange he offers the Inglesby millions,
his absolute devotion to yourself, and his hearty support to all your
father's plans and interests. Observe the last, please; it is highly
important. Besides this, Mayne and Eustis want reform, progress,
Demos-with-a-full-dinner-pail, all the wearisome rest of that uplift
stuff? Inglesby will see that they get an undiluted dose of it. More
yet: if you have any scruples about Mayne, Inglesby will get behind that
young man and boost him until he can crow on the weathervane--when you
are Mrs. Inglesby. A chap like Mayne would be valuable, properly
expurgated. Come, Miss Eustis, that's fair enough. If you refuse--well,
it's up to you to make Eustis understand that he must eliminate himself
from politics--and look out for himself," he finished ominously.

Mary Virginia rose impetuously.

"I am no longer seventeen, Mr. Hunter. What, do you honestly think you
can frighten a grown woman into believing that a handful of silly
letters could possibly be worth all that? Well, you can't. And--let me
remind you that blackmailing women isn't smiled upon in Carolina. A
hint of this and you'd be ostracized."

"So would you. And why use such an extreme term as blackmailing for
what really is a very fair offer?" said he, equably. "The letters are
not the only arrows in my quiver, Miss Eustis. But as you are more
interested in them than anything else just now, suppose we run over a
few, just to remind you of their amazing nature?" He rose leisurely,
opened the safe in a corner of the room, took from the steel
money-vault a package, and Mary Virginia recognized her own writing.
Always keeping them under his own hand, he yet allowed her to lean
forward and verify what he chose to read.

Her face burned and tears of mortification stung her eyes. Good
heavens, had she been as silly and as sentimental as all that? But as
she listened to his smooth remorseless voice, mortification merged
into amazement and amazement into consternation. Older and wiser now,
she saw what ignorance and infatuation had really accomplished, and
she realized that a fool can unwittingly pull the universe about her
ears.

She was appalled. It was as if her waking self were confronted by an
incredible something her dreaming self had done. She knew eno