“We will leave her out of the question, if you please,” she interrupted, speaking quickly.
“But I don’t please—and that for the best possible reason. I said just now that the scheme in which I require your aid will tend to the advantage of two persons, one of them being yourself. The other is—your daughter.”
“Then you will certainly not obtain my aid. In anything that tends to involve my child in co-operation—however indirect—with yourself, I flatly refuse to have any hand.”
The sardonic smile deepened around Fordham’s mouth. He opened his cigar-case, took out a fresh cigar, and lighted it with the greatest deliberation.
“It is always a pity to commit oneself to a rash statement,” he said. “The determination just expressed you will directly see reason to reconsider—certainly before you leave this delightful spot.”
“Never!”
“Oh, but you will! You are, to do you justice, far too much a woman of the world—life has been far too comfortable, too prosperous for you—for you both—during, we’ll say, the last twenty years, for you to face the alternative now.”
“Has it? I will risk anything—face any alternative.”
“Even that of starvation?”
“Even that. But it will not come to that. Poverty it may be—but—we can work—we can live somehow.”