And from the Dodds--uncle and nephew--came the menace which loomed over both of them.
Then to her came Peter Briggs, who had been summoned to a conference in the inner office; by direction of his chief he had been reading to Judge Warren certain entries penciled in the note-book which he guarded with the elastic band.
“The governor wants you to add these items to the record, so that the judge can have a copy,” said Mr. Briggs to the confidential secretary. “The subject isn't a very genteel one, Miss Kilgour, but orders are orders, and you'll have to excuse me.”
And Mr. Briggs kept snapping the elastic band nervously while he dictated, carefully looking away from the young woman.
In such manner Kate Kilgour learned of the existence of Zelie Dionne and of the child whom Walker Farr had protected; Mr. Briggs's zeal in the interest of his employer had made him a partisan in that affair, with easy conscience regarding the matter of the details. The bald record showed that Farr and the girl had cared for the child between them, had nursed it with grief and solicitude, had borne it to the plot of land where the little graves were crowded so closely. Mr. Briggs complacently avoided dates and age and the minuter details. He even pleaded the case, having caught a cue from Colonel Dodd; his record left the impression that Walker Farr, who had come from nowhere--nobody knew when--had lived in Marion unknown and unnoticed at the time when he had compassed the ruin of a confiding girl.
“A scalawag, and a bad one!” commented Mr. Briggs, closing his note-book. “And of course there's worse to come! Posing as a reformer--that's the way such renegades work the thing. A new game for every new place!”
And Kate Kilgour, remembering the vagrant on the broad highway, wrote down the arraignment of this person, trying to understand her emotions.
Her own eyes had seen him garbed as a tramp, plainly a homeless nomad.
Her ears had just listened to the story of his shame.
But after a time, in spite of what she had seen and heard, that strange instinct which dominates the feminine mind in spite of what the mere senses affirm took possession of her.
She had known from the first that Richard Dodd's garments, his attitude, his professions, his position did not make him what her woman's heart desired.