The squire told her to show the gentleman up immediately, and the two men were closeted together for more than two hours.
When the visitor left, Maria, who of course, was on the alert, observed that he was deathly pale, and that he walked unsteadily like one who had received a severe blow or had suddenly aged.
"So, that's the man; waal, the day o' judgment has come for him at last! The way of the transgressor is hard," she muttered gravely to herself.
The next afternoon, shortly before leaving his office, Clifford received the following note:
"Will Mr. Clifford Faxon have the kindness to call this evening about nine o'clock at No. 54 ---- Street? A matter of great importance is the excuse for the request. Very respectfully, WILLIAM F. TEMPLE."
Clifford was somewhat appalled as he read this, and readily understood that Squire Talford had taken matters into his own hands.
His whole soul arose in rebellion as he read the formal note, and his first impulse was to pen a curt refusal to comply with the writer's request. He had hoped that he need never meet the man again, now that he had learned who and what he was; this man, devoid of all honor, who, according to his own written statement, had deliberately set himself to win the love of a pure and innocent girl, just out of a spirit of rivalry with his brother, and then, as soon as he had become weary of his toy, he had remorselessly broken her heart by deserting her and leaving her in a strange city to fight the desperate battle of life alone.
His contempt for the man was beyond the power of expression, especially when he thought of how he had daringly ignored all moral and civil law by marrying another without taking any pains to ascertain whether his first victim was still living, and thus had entailed upon the second wife and her child irrevocably shame and sorrow.
Of course he understood that motives of revenge alone had prompted Squire Talford to precipitate matters in this way--that he would gloat over this opportunity to pay off, in a measure, the old scores which he had nursed for so many years, and his scorn for him was little less than that for his more daring and reckless brother.
But after giving the matter some serious thought, and realizing that a meeting between himself and Mr. Temple was bound to occur sooner or later, he decided to comply with his request, boldly declare the attitude which he intended to maintain toward him, and thus settle the matter for all time.