I should like you to dismiss from your mind at once the thought that I am going to take an unfair advantage of you in any way.
I have no present intention of publishing your correspondence with Mrs.
Brandon." (As he said this he took from his drawer a bundle of letters which Mayor Sluss recognized at once as the enthusiastic missives which he had sometime before penned to the fair Claudia.

Mr.Sluss groaned as he beheld this incriminating evidence.) "I am not trying," continued Cowperwood, "to wreck your career, nor to make you do anything which you do not feel that you can conscientiously undertake.

The letters that I have here, let me say, have come to me quite by accident.

I did not seek them.

But, since I do have them, I thought I might as well mention them as a basis for a possible talk and compromise between us." Cowperwood did not smile.