“I think,” he said, “that you are taking a great deal too much for granted. I do not know Scarlett Trent, and I frankly admit that I am prejudiced against him and all his class. Yet I think that he deserves his chance, like any man. Go to him and ask him, face to face, how your father died, declare yourself, press for all particulars, seek even for corroboration of his word. Treat him if you will as an enemy, but as an honourable one!”
She shook her head.
“The man,” she said, “has all the plausibility of his class. He has learned it in the money school, where these things become an art. He believes himself secure—he is even now seeking for me. He is all prepared with his story. No, my way is best.”
“I do not like your way,” he said. “It is not like you, Ernestine.”
“For the sake of those whom one loves,” she said, “one will do much that one hates. When I think that but for this man my father might still have been alive, might have lived to know how much I loathed those who sent him into exile—well, I feel then that there is nothing in the world I would not do to crush him!”
He rose to his feet—his fresh, rather boyish, face was wrinkled with care.
“I shall live to be sorry, Ernestine,” he said, “that I ever told you the truth about your father.”
“If I had discovered it for myself,” she said, “and, sooner or later, I should have discovered it, and had learned that you too had been in the conspiracy, I should never have spoken to you again as long as I lived.”
“Then I must not regret it,” he said, “only I hate the part you are going to play. I hate to think that I must stand by and watch, and say nothing.”
“There is no reason,” she said, “why you should watch it; why do you not go away for a time?”