That smash to you was the big
thing to me--what I'd planned for, and waited for. I didn't expect the
blow-off to come like this; I didn't expect to be caught in it when it
did happen. But since it has happened, well--There's your daughter,
Joe Ellison! Look at her! Look at what I've made her! I guess I'm even
all right!"
"My God!" breathed Joe Ellison, staring at the lean face twisting with
triumphant malignancy. "I didn't think there could be such a man!"
He slowly turned upon Maggie. This was the first direct recognition he
had taken of her since his entrance.
"I don't suppose you can guess what your being what you are has meant
to me," he began in a numbed tone which grew accusingly harsh as he
continued. "But I'd think that a daughter of mine, with such a mother,
would have had more instinctive sense than to have gone into such a
game with such a pair of crooks!"
"It's true--I have been what you think me--I did go into this thing
against Dick Sherwood," Maggie responded in a voice that at first was
faltering, then that stumbled rapidly on in her eagerness to pour out
all the facts. "But--but Larry Brainard had kept after me--and
finally he made me see how wrong I was headed. And then, this
afternoon, before I spoke to you, Larry told me that you were my real
father.
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