“Thank you, Mr. Dodd. And now that the matter has been settled to our mutual satisfaction, I will ask you to go. I think my mother needs my attention. And I am reminded that our bargain does not dispose of the fact that my mother owes you five thousand dollars. I will reflect on how that debt may be paid--by insurance”--her face grew whiter still--“or by some arrangement.”
“I wish you wouldn't say such--” But she interrupted him.
“On my part, this is strictly business, Mr. Dodd, and I must consider all sides. I will give the money matter careful thought. I'm sure we can arrange it. I have merely bought my mother's good name with _myself_!”
He stumbled out of the room and went on his way.
“Mother, you and I have some long, long thoughts to busy ourselves with before we attempt to talk to each other,” said the girl when the two were alone. “I am going to my room. Please do not disturb me until to-morrow.”
For an hour Kate Kilgour was a girl once more, sobbing her heart out against her pillow, stretched upon her bed in abandon of woe, torn by the bitter knowledge that she was alone in her pitiful fight. She was more frank with herself in her sorrow than she ever had been before. She owned to her heart that a few days before even a mother's desperate plight would hardly have won such a sacrifice as she had made.
She was ready to own that she loved that tall young man of mystery whose face had refuted the suspicion that he was a mere vagrant. It was strange--it was unaccountable. But she had ceased to wonder at the vagaries of love. In her prostration of mental energies and of hope she confessed to herself that she had loved him.
But now between his face and hers, as she shut her eyes and reproduced his features, limned in her memory, those fiery words danced--there was a “play-mamma” who with him had loved the little girl named Rosemarie.
Checking her sobs, she sighed, and her heart surrendered him.
Her sacrifice had been made both easier and yet more difficult.
Then she snuggled close to her pillows and gazed out into the gathering night, and pondered on the fact that if Walker Farr won his fight in the state convention that victory put an end to her poor little truce in the matter of Richard Dodd.