Duke looked at her uncompromisingly: “That man can’t ever be any friend of mine––understand that! He can’t ever marry you. If he ever tries to, so help me God, I’ll kill him if I hang for it. I know his game. I know what he wants. He doesn’t care a pinch of snuff about you. He thinks he can hit me a blow by getting you away from me.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” exclaimed Nan hopelessly.
Duke struck the table a smashing blow with his fist. “I’ll show Mr. de Spain and his friends where they get off.”
“Uncle Duke, if you won’t listen to reason, you must listen to sense. Think of what a position you put me in. I love you for all your care of me. I love him for his affection for me and consideration of me––because he knows how to treat a woman. I know he wouldn’t harm a hair on your head, for my sake, yet you talk now of bloodshed between you two. I know what your words mean––that one of you, or both of you are to be killed for a senseless feud. He will not stand up and let any man shoot him down without resistance. If you lay your blood on his head, you know it would put a stain between him and me that never could be washed out as long as we lived. If you kill him I could never stay here 271 with you. His blood would cry out every day and night against you.”
Duke’s violent finger shot out at her. “And you’re the gal I took from your mammy and promised I’d bring up a decent woman. You’ve got none o’ her blood in you––not a drop. You’re the brat of that damned, mincing brother of mine, that was always riding horseback and showing off in town while I was weeding the tobacco-beds.”
Nan clasped her hands. “Don’t blame me because I’m your brother’s child. Blame me because I’m a woman, because I have a heart, because I want to live and see you live, and to see you live in peace instead of what we do live in––suspicion, distrust, feuds, alarms, and worse. I’m not ungrateful, as you plainly say I am. I want you to get out of what you are in here––I want to be out of it. I’d rather be dead now than to live and die in it. And what is this anger all for? Nothing. He offers you his friendship––” She could speak no further. Her uncle with a curse left her alone. When she arose in the early morning he had already gone away.