He got no further, for she turned to him with a quick gesture of pained denial. "Don't--please don't. Why should you slander yourself?"
Something in her tone roused a response in him for a moment, but the next he had smothered it in a sort of reckless desire to shock this girl with the intelligent, trustful eyes--to force her from her belief in him.
"Slander," he echoed; "there is no slander, I assure you. What do you know about my life? Would it help you to understand my complicated state of mind about that boy, for instance, if I told you that I was once madly in love with his mother, and that I still think her the most beautiful woman I ever saw?"
He had not intended this confidence; yet now he had given it, he did not regret the impulse, nor did he wonder at it, since the thought of that past idyll had been interfering so much with the present one during the afternoon, that he felt inclined to get rid of both once and for all.
"I have always heard she was very beautiful," replied Marjory, slowly; "but, of course, I did not know----"
He burst into a hard laugh. "That I fell in love with her! Really, Miss Carmichael, you are most disconcertingly cool!"
"I was going to say," she put in, unmoved, "that I did not know she was the sort of person----"
"I would fall in love with? Indeed! Perhaps, as you appear to have formed some sort of estimate as to the qualities likely to attract me, you might give me a hint or two. It might help me in the selection of a wife." He hardly knew what he was saying, for his temper had got the better of him; indeed, he did not care for the moment what he said, save that it should be something that would put an end to this confidence of hers. But he had reckoned without her absolute unconsciousness; what is more, without her fearlessness and high spirit.
"I said nothing about a wife," she replied quietly. "Why should I? You were talking of love, and I knew that you had made up your mind to marry for money."
"So I have; what then?"