a sigh.

"You can't do wrong without paying for it, Dad."

"That's right. Bromfield--"

"I'm not thinking of Clarendon. I'm thinking about me. I feel as if I
had been dragged in the dust," she said wearily.

CHAPTER XXXVII

ON THE CARPET

The question at issue was not whether Beatrice would break with her
fiance, but in what way it should be done. If her father found him
guilty of what Durand had said, he was to dismiss him brusquely; if
not, Beatrice wanted to disengage herself gently and with contrition.

Whitford summoned Bromfield to his office where the personal equation
would be less pronounced. He put to him plainly the charge made by
Jerry and demanded an answer.

The younger man was between the devil and the deep sea. He would have
lied cheerfully if that would have availed. But a denial of the truth
of Durand's allegations would be a challenge for him to prove his
story. He would take it to the papers and spread it broadcast. From
that hour Clarendon Bromfield would be an outcast in the city. Society
would repudiate him. His clubs would cast him out. All the prestige
that he had built up by a lifetime of effort would be swept away.

No lie could save him. The only thing he could do was to sugarcoat the
truth. He set about making out a case for himself as skillfully as he
could.

"I'm a man of the world, Mr. Whitford," he explained. "When I meet an
ugly fact I look it in the face. This man Lindsay was making a great
impression on you and Bee. Neither of you seemed able quite to realize
his--his deficiencies, let us say. I felt myself at a disadvantage
with him because he's such a remarkably virile young man and he
constantly reminded you both of the West you love. It seemed fair to
all of us to try him out--to find out whether at bottom he was a decent
fellow or not. So I laid a little trap to find out."

Bromfield was sailing easily into his version of the affair. It was
the suavest interpretation of his conduct that he had been able to
prepare, one that put him in the role of a fair-minded man looking to
the best interests of all.

"Not the way Durand tells it," answered the miner bluntly. "He says
you paid him a thousand dollars to arrange a trap to catch Lindsay."

"Either he misunderstood me or he's distorting the facts," claimed the
clubman with an assumption of boldness.

"That ought to be easy to prove. We'll make an appointment with him
for this afternoon