CHAPTER. L.
A BARGAIN AT LAST.
“You don’t say so! Oh, Mr. Mahone, this is news! Why, just as like as not, she’s leagued in with him. That whole family may be a nest of thieves.”
“A nest of thieves—and she among them, I shouldn’t wonder!”
“Prove it; fasten it upon them; have the thing made public, and our work is done.”
“Would that be enough?”
“Certainly. Could any girl creep out of a nest of thieves, into such society as the madam and Miss Spicer move in? I should think not.”
“Would it be enough to prove the boy guilty?” questioned Robert, thoughtfully.
“No: she will want more than that.”
“And even there we may fail. I have it—I have it! Don’t put yourself to any more trouble. The whole thing has come into my head at once. I only hope you are as sure of the money, as I am of earning it. Five thousand you said?”
“Five thousand!”
“Money down?”
“Money down!”
“But the division. We may as well start fair, you know, this being business and nothing else.”
Ellen Post looked down, and began to roll up her cap-string with both hands; then she unrolled it, and smoothed out the ribbon. Something was doubtless in her mind, that she did not know how to put into speech. At last she faltered out,
“Would there be any need of a division? I thought—I thought, perhaps, that you might prefer the whole, which is a fortune for two young persons just starting life in a liquor store, say, or a first-class boarding-house, where a real lady is wanted for the head of the table.”
“Oh!”
Ellen looked up anxiously. What did that emphatic “oh” mean. Had Mahone only thought of this for the first time?
The face she cast her timid eyes upon was changing rapidly; first, a red flame darted up to the roots of his ruddy hair, then the color melted away, and a slow pallor stole over it, while a thoughtful and sinister light crept into the golden-green eyes. Ellen grew fearfully uneasy. The thousands she coveted would lose half their value, unless Mahone himself was counted in.
“You say ‘oh,’ as if I had hinted at something disagreeable, Mr. Mahone? If so, let us drop the subject. Other people can be found.”
Mahone started, for the girl spoke in bitter earnest.
“Other people, my dear?”
“Miss Post, if you please.”
“Don’t be so cold, so cruel! If I said ‘oh,’ it was because a prospect of happiness broke upon me, that took away my breath.”
Here Mahone seized the hand which was lifted to the cap-string again, and repeated the naughty word oh, oh, oh, half a dozen times between the kisses he lavished upon it; but, strange to say, the obnoxious syllable seemed rather pleasant to her than otherwise this time. Circumstances alter cases, you know.
“To think that I shall have a creature like this, and five thousand dollars, all in a breath. I cannot believe it. If a fortune-teller had foretold it, I should have set her down as a rank impostor, and refused to pay her fee. But now, tell me, my Ellen, is it real? Not the money. I don’t care the snap of my finger for that! But is it possible that you love me?”
“Love you, Robert? Mr. Mahone, I mean!”
“Oh, call me Robert; do call me Robert!”
“Well, I will! You asked if I loved you? I who never lifted admiring eyes to another man; had you no eyes to read mine, no heart to hear how mine was beating like a—a trip-hammer against my side? Did you never suspect?”
“I never dared to hope; but now—now I am the happiest man alive! You will not talk of other people after this.”
There was a tone of anxiety in this last question quite as sincere as the protestations he had made; but Ellen did not observe it.
“I shall talk nor think of no one but you, Robert.”
Some one knocked at the parlor-door, rather sturdily, and broke up this pleasant scene, which might have lasted for hours, but for that. Mahone started up, and opened the door, where he found Boyce flushed with impatience.
“I thought you was never coming out,” he said, rudely enough. “I have got business to attend to, and can’t sit waiting here. If you’ve got any more to say, say it now.”
“I’ll walk with you, Boyce,” answered Robert, “if Miss Post will excuse me.”
Miss Post bowed with condescension, and the two young men went into the street together.
That night a woman who lived in a tall tenement house not very far from Smith’s grocery, was surprised by the entrance of two men, with whom she was doubtless on terms of great domestic intimacy, for she came out of her bedroom half dressed, and a little cross, for she had been working hard all day, and dropped to sleep while hushing the child upon the bed she had found no time to make. Something that the men proposed made her angry, for she protested, and had fierce words with the tallest of her visitors, who rudely ordered her to be silent, and go back to her child. With some grumbling she obeyed him.
After that, these men came up and down the numerous flights of stairs, again and again, carrying burdens on their shoulders. Then a wagon drove off, and, for an hour or two, the same men were moving like shadows around the house where the Laurence family lay sleeping.