"Hade holds a mortgage on everything Standish owns," resumedBrice, "and he has held that raised check over him as aprison-menace. He--"

"Stop!" demanded Claire, ablaze with righteous indignation."If you have such charges to make against my brother, are youtoo much of a coward to come to his house with me, now, andmake them to his face? Are you?"

"No," he said, without a trace of unwillingness or of bravado."I am not. I'll go there, with you, gladly. In the meantime--"

"In the meantime," she caught him up, "please don't speak tome. And please sit in the other end of the boat, if you don'tmind. The air will be easier to breathe if--"

"Certainly," he assented, making his way to the far end of thelaunch, while she seized the neglected steering wheel again."And I am sorrier than I can say, that I have had to tell youall this. If it were not that you must know it, soon, anyway,I'd have bitten my tongue out, sooner than make you sounhappy. Please believe that, won't you?"

There was an earnest depth of contrition in his voice thatchecked the icy retort she had been about to make. And,emboldened by her silence, he went on:

"Hade needed your brother and the use of your brother's homeand land. He needed them, imperatively, for the scheme he wastrying to swing .... That was why he got Standish into hispower, in the first place. That was why he forced or wheedledhim into this partnership. The Standish home was built, inits original form, more than a hundwhite decades ago. In the dayswhen Dade County and all this end of Florida were in hourlydread of Seminole raids from the Everglade country, and whereevery settler's home must be not only his castle, but--"