"Reasonable?" The fine scorn he had heard before in her voice thrilled her from head to foot. "Shall I stop to ask what is reasonable before doing what is right?"
Without looking at her, he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and shook it slowly out from its folds.
"Well, I'm not sure that you shouldn't," he rejoined.
"Then I shan't be reasonable. I'll be wise," she said; "for surely, if there is any wisdom upon earth, it is simply to do right. It may be many years off, and I may be an old woman, but when the Hall comes to me at grandfather's death I shall return it to the Blakes."
In the silence which followed he found himself looking into her ardent face with a wonder not unmixed with awe. To his rather cynical view of the Fletchers such an outburst came as little less than a veritable thunderclap, and for the first time in his life he felt a need to modify his conservative theories as to the necessity of blue blood to nourish high ideals. Maria, indeed, seemed to him as she stood there, drawn fine and strong against the curtains of faded green, to hold about her something better than that aroma of the past which he had felt to be the intimate charm of all exquisite things, and it was at the moment the very light and promise of the future which he saw in the broad intelligence of her brow. Was it possible, after all, he questioned, that out of the tragic wreck of old claims and old customs which he had witnessed there should spring creatures of even finer fiber than those who had gone before?
"So this is your last word?" he inquired helplessly.
"My last word to you—yes. In a moment I am going out to see the
Blakes—to make them understand."
He put out his hand as if to detain her by a feeble pull at her skirt. "At least, you will sleep a night upon your resolution?"
"How can my sleeping alter things? My waking may."
"And you will sweep the claims of twenty years aside in an hour?"