Her startled dark eyes and his determined gray ones met, and so remained.
"You, and your husband. Are you going to marry a man who can take my place in this business, in the factory and the model village my brother and I built around it; a man whose name will be fit to join with ours and so in a fashion preserve it here? Will you wait until such a one is found and will you aid me to find him? Or will you too follow selfish, idle fancies of your own?"
"No!" she answered, quite pale. "I would not do that! I will try to help."
"You will take up the work the men of your name refuse, you will provide a substitute for them?"
Her earnestness sprang to meet his strength of will, she leaned nearer in her enthusiasm of self-abnegation, scarcely understood.
"I will find a substitute or accept yours. I, indeed I will try not to fail."
It was characteristic that he offered neither praise nor caress.
"You have relieved my mind," said Ethan Ffrench, and turned his face once more to the fire.