Now he raised his great hand, his lips trembling. "Just wait a bit, my dear," said he. "We'll take what you've said as proof of your love for your own son. We'll let it stop right there, please. We'll forget what happened last night at your broken gate—we'll forget what's happened just now inside my broken gate. I told you if I ever married you I'd do it on such a basis that I could look you in the face, and you could me. That's the only way, Aurora. There's not any other way. I reckon I'll always love you—but only on the square."
"But what can we do—you refuse to help us—and the boy's innocent!"
"Wait, my dear," said he slowly. "I've not a woman's wit, so I can't leap on quite so fast as you do. A lawyer reads word by word. I'm still in the preliminaries, not even into the argument of this case yet."
"But you have refused—you have said it meant ruin to you—I know—I mean that to everyone."
"You've meant a great deal more than that to me, my dear," said Horace Brooks, "and no matter what you mean—no matter what my decision may do to my future—no matter what it may cost me in my larger ambitions, which I entertain, or once did, the same as any other man here in America—why, let it go."
"But what are you going to do? I'm costing you everything, everything—and I can give you nothing, nothing—and I'm asking still of you everything, everything."
"Tut, tut! Aurora," said Horace Brooks, "I'm going to take this case—for better or for worse! Didn't I tell you I wanted to stand between you and trouble—any trouble? A man likes to do things for a woman—for the woman he loves."
She sat for a long time, white, motionless, looking at him.
"The pay——" she began stumblingly.
"I'd rather not hear you say anything about that," he replied simply. "You did not say anything at all. This is the office of Horace Brooks, attorney at law. As I understand it, I'm duly retained for the defense in the case of the state against Dieudonné Lane, charged with murder."