"Well?" she asked almost defiantly.
He looked down at her. All splendid self-assurance seemed ebbing away. She felt a sudden depression of spirit, a sudden strange sense of insignificance.
"I have come," he said, "if I can, to buy my brother's freedom."
"To buy your brother's freedom?" she repeated, in a dazed tone.
"My brother is infatuated with you," Stephen declared. "I wish to save him."
Her woman's courage began to assert itself. She raised her eyes to his.
"Exactly what do you mean?" she asked calmly. "In what way is any man to be saved from me? If your brother should care for me, and I, by any chance, should happen to care for him, in what respect would that be a state from which he would require salvation?"
"You make my task more difficult," he observed deliberately. "Does it amuse you to practise your profession before one so ignorant and so unappreciative as myself? If my brother should ever marry, it is my firm intention that he shall marry an honest woman."
Louise sat quite still for a moment. A flash of lightning had glittered before her eyes, and in her ears was the crash of thunder. Her face was suddenly strained. She saw nothing but the stern, forbidding expression of the man who looked down at her.
"You dare to say this to me, here in my own house?"