"He—really does seem to care for me—as I am, you know. And I've never told him a single untruth. I've nothing to blame myself for."
"I'm sure of that."
"Yet you don't approve of me—one bit. You think I'm a—kind of adventuress. So does Mrs. Jones. Me! Why, what would the people at home in Salem say if any one suggested such a thing? You don't know the life I've led, Lord Ernest."
"I can imagine. You don't want to go back to it again, do you?"
"It does seem as if I couldn't, now. It's seemed so, even before Willis—oh, I'm sure you think I never meant to go back, once I'd broken free from the dull grind."
"No harm in that!"
"I'm glad you say so. I took all my legacy to see the world a little —well, nearly all, not quite, perhaps, to tell the truth. And being brave has brought me this reward: the love of a man who can give me everything worth having. I shan't be outside life any more. And Willis won't have any reason to blame me when he—when he—"
"No reason, of course," I fitted into her long pause. "But men as well as women are unreasonable, sometimes, you know. And if he should be so —er—wrong-headed as to think you'd deceived him about yourself—"
"Then he ought to blame Monny, not me!"
"He ought, perhaps. But the question is, what he will do. And you can't like having a sword hanging over your head? Supposing he should be unjust, and refuse to carry out—"