"He's a good deal of a man, after all, Mrs. Braddock."
"A good deal of a man," she repeated.
"He wishes Christine to be my wife. He told you so, but she won't consent until you tell her that it is all right. It's silly of her. I'm never going to give her up, and she knows it."
She faced him suddenly. "You ask me why the marriage cannot take place to-morrow, David. Would you be just as eager to have it take place if her father decided to change his mind and remain here, with all the consequences such an act might create?"
"Certainly," he replied promptly.
"You do not forget what he is, what he has been, what he may yet become?"
"That has nothing to do with it. I love Christine."
"Would you be willing to stand at his side, the husband of his daughter, and say, 'I am content to be called your son'—would you?"
David stared hard at the floor for a moment. "I think that is rather an unfair question, Mrs. Braddock, when we stop to recall the fact that both you and Christine have denied him for years. I will call myself his son when you call him husband and Christine speaks of him as father—to the world. You can hardly expect me to be proud of what you are ashamed to own."
She bowed her head in sudden humility. "I was wrong," she said. "I deserve the rebuke."