"It will mean just that!"
"And nothing can move you from your purpose?"
"Nothing that I can now think of," he answered, adding with some vehemence: "Katrine
Dulany, is it that you know me so little? My cousin suffered much. She was deserted by a scoundrel while little more than a child. These things must be paid for. But if you think I'd do a crooked thing in business to settle a grudge or belittle a rival, you don't know me at all. There's none, not Ravenel himself, who will demand everything proven beyond doubt sooner than I. I'll take every point I can honestly, but the man who is not absolutely honest in business is a fool. Until he learns to be honest from the higher reason, he should be honest from selfishness. It pays. It's capital."
"Then you believe the cause just?"
"I believe that the present Ravenel's father married in America knowing that he had a living wife and child in France."
Katrine stood, hand-clasped, looking straight into Dermott's eyes. But what she saw was an old garden in Carolina, wind-blown pines, the scarlet creepers around an old bench, and a man with blanched face and restless eyes; what she heard, underneath Dermott's voice, were words from the past:
"I might lie to you, but the thing that separates us is family pride, family pride. I am going away to-day, going because I do not dare to stay!"
"
Nothing else in life could hurt Mr. Ravenel as this thing will if proven," she said, at length.