"By all the saints at once!" he cried, gayly, at sight of her. "Here have I been ruminating on the sins of the fathers; on the triumphant fifth act, with vice punished and virtue rewarded at the fall of the curtain, when you enter!" And here her silence and pallor and accusing eyes stopped his talking. "What is it, Katrine?" he demanded.
"Did you bring this trouble to Mr. Ravenel?" she asked, her eyes filled with a dangerous light which in a second was matched by the blaze in his.
"
Do you mean that ye think it was I who struck a man in the back in the way this thing was done?" he cried, bringing his closed fist down on the newspaper, which lay on the desk before him, in a splendid kind of anger. "How little you know me, after all!" he said, reproach in his voice. "How little ye know me! I've had neither art or part in it, nor suspicion of it until to-day. You'll be wanting proof of it!" he went on, a bit of scorn in his voice. "If so, mayhap the common-sense of the situation will appeal to you, though I don't know." He was angry, and she felt the brunt of it in these words. "Look you!" he continued. "Why should I be ruining an estate that I'm trying to get possession of? It would be a fool's part to play."
"Forgive me, McDermott!" she cried. "Oh, forgive me! I want no further proof. Your face is enough for me. But I'm beside myself with grief."
"I suppose," he continued, "that you reasoned I was capable of this because of that affair about the land on the other side of the river?"
"I did think of it," Katrine admitted. "Forgive me for it, Dermott, but I did think of it!"
"Do you know for whom I bought that land,
Katrine Dulany? For your father—no less. It was got with the hope of helping him. It stands in his name in the State records to-day."
"Oh, Dermott!" she pleaded, the Irish form of speech coming back to her. "You'll just be forgiving me, won't you?" She put her hand on his sleeve and looked up at him with imploring eyes. "You must know how great and good I still believed you to be when I tell you that I came to you to ask you to help him. I've some money—the Countess, you know," she explained—"and I thought if you'd faith in my voice—and ye've said often that ye have—that if"—she broke into a storm of weeping—"if you'd just lend him the money that's needed I could sing the debt clear in the years to come."