My conduct, I admit, was beastly.

No excuses offered.

All I want to do, now, is to make the _amende honorable_, be forgiven, and have the former status resumed." Thus spoke Waldron.

But all the time his soul lay hot within him, at having so to humble himself before Flint; at being thus obliged to eat crow, and fawn and feign and creep.
"If I didn't need your billion, old man," his secret thought was, as he eyed Flint with pretended humility, "you might go to Hell, for all of me--you and your daughter with you, damn you both!" The Billionaire sat blinking, for a moment.

Then, picking up a pencil and idly scrawling pothooks on the big clean sheet of blotting-paper that covered his reference-book table, beside which the men were sitting, he asked: "Well, what's the trouble all about?
What are the facts?
I must have those, in full, before I can guarantee to do anything toward changing my daughter's opinion.