Explore "The Nether Millstone" by Fred M. White on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Once the ladies had departed, Sir George brightened visibly. He reached out eagerly for the claret and drank two glasses rapidly. Ralph declined the decanters, and also the cigar that his host handed him. He contented himself with a cigarette; he replied more or less vaguely to Sir George's idle chatter. It seemed almost incomprehensible to him that a father could sacrifice a daughter to a scoundrel like Mayfield, and accept the situation as if it had been the most natural thing in the world.
"I feel bound to have a few words with you, Sir George," he said presently. "More by accident than anything else I seem to have been dragged into your family secrets. We will not go into the reason why I was in a position to render you a service a night or two ago. It is unfortunate that that service should have proved useless, but it is more than probable than those papers will turn up again."