“Don’t bother your head about it,” she said as lightly as she could. “Think I’m crazy, if that makes it any easier for you.”
“I can’t think that,” he answered, conveying in the accented monosyllable his inability to think lightly of her mental equipment. “There’s something underneath it all I don’t know. You’ve not been quite open, quite as open as I think my frankness deserves. But, of course, a man can’t force a lady’s confidence. If you don’t want to give me yours, I’ve got to be content without it.”
Berny emitted a vague sound of agreement. She once more drew herself to the edge of the chair, taking the renewed, arranging grip of departure on her purse. She wanted to go.
“Well,” she said with the cheerful lengthening of the word, which is the precursor of the preliminary sentence of farewell, “I guess——” but he stopped her again with the outspread, authoritative hand.
“Don’t be in such a hurry; I’ve not finished yet. There’s more to be said, and it’s worth losing a few moments over.” His face was so much more commanding than his words that she made no attempt to move, though each minute deepened her desire to leave.
“This is just between you and me,” he went on slowly, his voice lowered, dropped to the key of confidences. “It’s a little matter between us that no one else needs to know anything about. My part of it just comes from the fact that I want to do a good turn not only to Delia Ryan, but to you. I’m sorry for you, young woman, and I think you’re up against it. Now, here’s my proposition; I’ll add something to that money myself. I’ll give you another hundred thousand. I’ll put it with Mrs. Ryan’s pile, and it’ll run your fortune up well past a quarter of a million.”
His eyes fixed upon her were hard in his benevolently-smiling face.
“What do you think about it?” he asked, as she was speechless. “Three hundred thousand dollars in a lump’s a goodish bit of money.”
Berny felt dizzy. As her rancor had seemed slipping from her in the earlier part of the interview, now she felt as if her resolution was suddenly melting. She was confused between the strangling up-rush of greed and the passion that once again rose in her against the old man, who showed such a bold determination to sweep her from his daughter’s path. She was no longer mistress of herself. Inward excitement, the unfamiliar struggle with temptation, had upset and unnerved her. But she did not yet know it, and she answered slowly, with a sort of sullenness, that might have passed as the heaviness of indifference.
“What do you want to give it to me for?”