I want you to tell me what has happened to my
concerns--to the railways, and also to the towns. I don't want you to
hide anything, because, if you do, I'll have Jim in, and Jim, under
proper control, will tell me the whole truth, and perhaps more than the
truth. That's the way with Jim. When he gets started he can't stop. Tell
me exactly everything."
Anxiety drove the colour from her cheeks. She shrank back.
"You must tell me," he urged. "I'd rather hear it from you than from Dr.
Rockwell, or Jim, or your father. Your telling wouldn't hurt as much as
anybody else's, if there has to be any hurt. Don't you understand--but
don't you understand?" he urged.
She nodded to herself in the mirror on the wall opposite. "I'll try to
understand," she replied presently; "Tell me, then: have they put someone
in my place?"
"I understand so," she replied.
He remained silent for a moment, his face very pale. "Who is running the
show?" he asked.
She told him.
"Oh, him!" he exclaimed. "He's dead against my policy. He'll make a
mess."
"They say he's doing that," she remarked.
He asked her a series of questions which she tried to answer frankly, and
he came to know that the trouble between the two towns, which, after the
Orange funeral and his own disaster had subsided, was up again; that the
railways were in difficulties; that there had been several failures in
the town; that one of the banks--the Regent-had closed its doors; that
Felix Marchand, having recovered from the injury he had received from
Gabriel Druse on the day of the Orange funeral, had gone East for a month
and had returned; that the old trouble was reviving in the mills, and
that Marchand had linked himself with the enemies of the group
controlling the railways hitherto directed by himself.
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