“You drive me into a corner and then beat me!” she cried. “It is all wrong, wrong! And you have broken my heart, David, because I thought you were different. You lay this horrible burden upon me one minute, and tie my hands the next. What if this man who was hurt last night should die?”
“He won’t die; but neither will he talk,” was the gritting reply.
The young woman had risen and her color was coming and going in hot little flashes.
“You think because I am my father’s daughter you are safe in saying anything you please, and in going on in any hard-hearted way you choose! It is what I might have expected of a man who would deny his only sister her one little chance of happiness. You are worse than other men, because you know the right way and you won’t walk in it!”
He sprang up suddenly and caught her hands in both of his.
“You are right, Vinnie; I do know better. Every word you have been saying has cut like a knife!” he burst out, smashing all the barriers of insincerity at a single blow. “I know where I stand, and what I’ve been doing, and I have been a conscious hypocrite every time I have pleaded the way of the world as my excuse. But a man must be loyal to something. For the obligation, the immense obligation, I owe your father. I have put my hands between his knees as the old-time vassals used to do, and sworn to make his cause my cause. He knows about that bad tunnel roof; knows more than I do; and when I spoke to him, he told me to forget it. I can’t be disloyal to him—and keep even a thief’s sense of honor!”
She released her hands quickly. It was early for any of the porch loungers to be out, but they were standing fairly in front of the lobby windows.
“That is better; much better,” she commended with a little sigh. “I thought you were gone, David; honestly, I was afraid that the good old David I used to know and—and think a lot of—was dead and buried—and it hurt me as much as it would if you had been my own brother. Now, if I could only forget what happened last night——”
“You may set your mind at rest about Strayer,” he put in quickly. “He won’t die; and he wasn’t assaulted, as you seem to think he was, though I won’t say what might or might not have happened in another minute or two. He was testing the bad roof with the point of an iron bar, and a loose rock came down upon his head.”
“But now you will pull the roof down, or timber it, or do whatever is needful to make it safe?” she said, half pleading with him.