pening. Hard as nails, cold as ice, to him she was
merely a means to an end. He did not even hate her. The guillotine
does not hate those whom it decapitates, either; none the less it
takes off their heads once they get in the way of the descending
knife.

"I suggest," said Hunter, rising, "that you go home now and think the
matter over carefully. Weigh what you and your father stand to gain
against what you stand to lose. I do not press you for an immediate
decision. You shall have a reasonable time for consideration." It was
a threat and a command, thinly veiled.

All that night, unable to sleep, she did think the matter over
carefully; she turned and twisted it about and about and saw it now
from this angle and now from that; and the more she studied it in all
its bearings the worse it grew. There was no escape from it.

Suppose, although she knew she could never, never hope to
satisfactorily explain them, she nevertheless told her father about
those letters and the part they were to be made play, now that his own
affairs had reached a crisis? She could fancy herself telling him that
he must shield himself behind her skirts if he would save himself from
ruin. That ... to James Eustis!

Suppose that the Carolina trigger-finger slipped, as Hunter had
nonchalantly admitted might happen: what then? But it is the woman in
the case who always suffers the most and the longest; it is the woman,
always, who pays the greater price. Her fears magnified the imagined
evil, her pride was crucified.

What tortured her most was that they were actually making her party to
a wreck that could easily be averted. Hunter had admitted that Eustis
could weather the storm, if he were given time. Oh, to gain time for
him, then! And she lay there, staring into the dark with wet eyes. How
could she help him, she who was also snared?

And in desperation she hit upon a forlorn hope. She dared not speak
out openly to anybody, she dared not flatly refuse Inglesby's
pretensions, for that would be to invite the avalanche. What she
proposed to herself was to hold him off as long as she could. She
would not be definite until the last possible minute. Always there was
the chance that by some miracle of mercy Eustis might be able to meet
those notes when they fell due. Let him do that, and she would then
tell him everything. But not now. He was bearing too much, without
that added burden.

It cost her a supreme effort to face the situation as it