"
"I promise you that hope, and any other you may see fit to aspire to,"
John Martin said, with a grim smile, "since there isn't the remotest
chance of your succeeding in the task you have set yourself. Believe
me, it will take both money and wits to get the better of Hamar,
Curtis and Kelson."
"Anyhow, I have your permission to try. I shall do my best."
"You may do what you like," John Martin rejoined, "so long as you
don't talk to me again about Gladys till you've redeemed your pledge,
that is to say, till you've overthrown the Modern Sorcery Company. In
the meanwhile, I must ask you to abstain from seeing her."
"I am afraid I can't promise that."
"Can't promise that," John Martin cried, his eyes suffusing with
sudden passion. "Can't you! Then damn it, you must. I'm not going to
have my daughter throw herself away on a penniless puppy. There, curse
it all, you know what I think of you now--you're a bumptious puppy,
and I swear you shall not come within a mile of her."
"I shall," Shiel retorted, drawing himself up to his full height. "I
shall see her whenever she will permit me--and since she is not at
home at the present moment, I shall now await her return outside the
house, and defy the savage old bull-dog inside it." Leaving John
Martin too taken aback with astonishment to articulate a syllable,
Shiel withdrew.
True to his word, he waited to see Gladys. He paced up and down the
road in front of the house from eleven o'clock in the morning, when
his interview with John Martin had terminated, till eight o'clock in
the evening, and was just beginning to think he would have to give up
all hope of seeing her that day, when she came in sight.
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