“It hurt me; I think you will never know how much it hurt,” she said slowly. “A man asks utter and absolute loyalty of the woman he loves.”
“And the woman can ask no less of the man, you would say. That is true. I am no defender of the double standard; still less an apologist for my sex. I have only one excuse, Richardia; it wasn’t merely propinquity—as you and Poictiers seemed to think. I had never known what love was until I met you. Elizabeth is going to marry Poictiers, and you must believe me when I say that I think just as much of her—and in the same way—as I did before. But let that pass. I had found my coal mine, and had lost pretty nearly everything else, including my own self-respect. You were lost to me; doubly lost, as I thought then; so it seemed that the only thing for me to do was to set the Ocoee house in order, and after that was done to go away and try to forget.”
“You are still meaning to go away?”
“Yes. I meant to stay long enough to make somebody suffer for the bushwhackings, but that is past. I have sent for Peters, our family lawyer, and when he comes we shall settle the property affair. Three-fifths of the stock in the mine will go to my mother and sister, and the remainder will be turned over to your father to be distributed among the Parker victims. This is what I have been meaning to do all along, if I should be fortunate enough to discover the coal.”
She shook her head. “You are reckoning without my father. He won’t take the money.”
“He must be made to take it. It is only just and fair. When it comes to that, you must help me, Richardia; for his sake and for your brother’s.”
“Poor Dick!” she murmured. “He needs a friend much more than he needs the money; some one who would care enough for him to stand by and hold him up to the best there is in him. There is good in him; you may not believe it now, but there is, really—lots of it.”
“I can very readily believe it, since he is your brother and the son of your father. And he has proved it to-night by climbing into the breach for McNabb. He will have his chance on the Ocoee, and Wilmerding will be his friend.”
“Then you are determined to go away?”
“Yes. I owe it to you and to everybody else, not less than to myself. But some day, Richardia, after I have done penance for the sin of loving you before I had a right to I am coming back. But I had forgotten; your brother wished me to ask you to play for him; something that would drive the devil away. He said he wanted to think.”