"I must. And we can expiate it together. We can help each other."
"Do you mean that you will actually marry me?"
"Of course," said the girl. "How could you for a moment think otherwise? I mean what I say when I assume part of the blame."
"And so you have settled it without me, have you?" asked her father.
"No. We are going to settle it this way with your approval and consent."
"And I am to give my daughter to a man who would administer knock-out drops to a friend and shanghai him on the eve of his wedding and appropriate that friend's promised wife?"
"It is just, sir," said Harnash bitterly. "Think what you do," he continued, turning to the girl with a gesture of renunciation.
"No," answered Stephanie to her father. "You are giving your daughter to a man who, however he sinned, and your daughter doesn't presume to pass condemnation upon him as she might were she not a party to it, has frankly and openly acknowledged his transgression and expressed himself willing to take the consequences."
"Humph," said the old man, a flicker of a smile appearing on his iron face.
"Remember, he might have kept silent."