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Updated: June 24, 2025
"What are you doing here? Who are you?" he said. "Don't you know me?" answered Lygon, gazing intently at him. Face to face with the man who had tempted him to crime, Lygon had a new sense of boldness, a sudden feeling of reprisal, a rushing desire to put the screw upon him.
For minutes the struggle continued, for Lygon was fighting with the desperation of one who makes his last awful onset against fate and doom. Dupont also had his knife at work. At last it drank blood, but as he got it home, he suddenly reeled blindly, lost his balance, and lurched into the water with a groan.
She scarcely knew why she said it; but she was sensible of trouble, maybe of tragedy, somewhere; and she had a vague dread of she knew not what, for, hide it, avoid it, as she had done so often, there was in her heart an unhappy doubt concerning her father. A great change had come over Lygon. Her presence had altered him. He was again where she had left him in the afternoon.
Dupont and Lygon had been paid their price, and had disappeared and been forgotten they were but pawns in his game and there was no proof against Henderley. Henderley had forgotten. Lygon wished to forget, but Dupont remembered, and meant now to reap fresh profit by the remembrance. Dupont was coming to-night, and the hatchet of crime was to be dug up again. So it had been planned.
Ten thousand dollars but ten thousand dollars by blackmail, hush-money, the reward of fire and blood and shame! Was it to go on? Was he to commit a new crime? He stirred, as though to shake off the net that he felt twisting round him, in the hands of the robust and powerful Dupont, on whom crime sat so lightly, who had flourished while he, Lygon, had gone lower and lower.
"What do you want for your shack and the lake?" he asked, with restored confidence. The fellow no doubt was grateful that his daughter had saved his life, he thought. "Five hundred dollars," answered Lygon, quickly. Henderley would have handed over all that lay on the table before him, but he thought it better not to do so. "I'll buy it," he said. "You seem to have been hit hard.
At sight of this millionaire with the pile of notes before him there vanished the sickening hesitation of the afternoon, of the journey with Dupont. The look of the robust, healthy financier was like acid in a wound; it maddened him. "You will know me better soon," Lygon added, his head twitching with excitement. Henderley recognised him now.
Lygon, dumfounded, looked from her to her father, and he saw now in Henderley's eyes a fear that was not to be misunderstood. Here was where Henderley could be smitten, could be brought to his knees. It was the vulnerable part of him. Lygon could see that he was stunned. The great financier was in his power. He looked back again to the girl, and her face was full of trouble.
Our old friend, Col. E. Lygon, came to see us to-day, and is as amiable as ever. He is a specimen of a military man of which England may well be proud. The Ducs de Talleyrand and Dino, the Marquis de Mornay, the Marquis de Dreux-Brezé, and Count Charles de Mornay, dined here yesterday. The Marquis de Brezé is a clever man, and his conversation is highly interesting.
Lygon would never have been Lady Hardwicke, and worked her husband's twenty purses of state upon curtains and hangings of crimson velvet. And, if he were so inclined, this writer could point to a learned judge, who in his days of 'stuff' and 'guinea fees' was deemed an ineligible match for a country apothecary's pretty daughter.
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