"You--you think I jest?" There was a grim humour in the burning eyes.

"I do not know."

"Well, then, I'll tell you. I am quite serious. While I have been exiled
from your attentions--chained to this rock" (he struck the arms of the
chair like a passionate child), "I have reached a conclusion I have
always contemplated, more or less. Now that I have recognized that the
time will undoubtedly come when you, Con--the lot of you--will clear
out, I have decided to prove to you all that I am not quite the
dependant you think me."

"Why--what can you mean, Uncle William?"

This was a new phase and Lynda bent across the dog at her knee and put
her hand on the arm of the chair. She was frightened, aroused. Truedale
saw this and laughed a dry, mirthless laugh.

"Oh! a chair that can roll the length of this house can roll the
distance I desire to go. Money can pay for anything--anything! Thank
God, I have money, plenty of it. It means power--even to such a thing as
I am. Power, Lynda, power! It can snarl and unsnarl lives; it can buy
favour and cause terror. Think what I would have been without it all
these years. Think! Why, I have bargained with it; crushed with it;
threatened and beckoned with it--now I am going to play with it! I'm
going to surprise every one and have a gala time myself. I'm going to
set things spinning and then I'm going on a journey. It's queer" (the
sneering voice fell to a murmur), "all my prison-years I've thought of
this and planned it; the doing of it seems quite the simplest part. I
wonder now why I have kept behind the bars when, by a little exertion--a