“If it is convenient, Mr. Torrance would like to speak to you,” she said.
Flora Schuyler rose and followed the girl down the corridor; but her heart beat faster than usual when the door of Torrance’s room closed behind her. The stove was no longer lighted, and Torrance stood beside the hearth, which was littered with half-consumed papers, and Miss Schuyler, who knew his precision in dress, noticed that he still wore the bespattered garments he had ridden in. But it was the grimness of his face, and the weariness in his pose, which seized her attention and aroused a curious sympathy for him. He glanced at her sharply, with stern, dark eyes.
“I have to thank you for coming, but I am going to talk plainly,” he said. “You connived at the meetings between my daughter and the rascally adventurer who has married her?”
“They are married?” exclaimed Miss Schuyler in her eagerness, and the next moment felt the blood rise to her face as she realized that she had blundered in admitting any doubt upon the subject. “I mean, of course, that I wondered whether Mr. Grant could have arranged it so soon.”
“You seem to attach a good deal of importance to the ceremony,” Torrance said, with a bitter smile. “Marriage is quite easy in this country.”
Miss Schuyler was not deficient in courage of one kind, and she looked at him steadily. “I came down to speak to you because it seemed your due,” she said, “but I have no intention of listening to any jibes at my friends.”
Torrance made her a little half-respectful and half-ironical inclination. “Then will you be good enough to answer my question?”
“Though most of the few meetings were accidental, I went with Hetty intentionally on two occasions because it seemed fitting.”
“It seemed fitting that a girl should betray her father to the man who wanted to ruin him, supply him with the dollars that helped him in his scheme, and, more than all, warn him of each move we made! Well, my standard is not very high, but the most cruel blow I have had to bear was the discovery that my daughter had fallen so far.”
The hoarseness of his voice, and the sight of the damp upon his forehead, had a calming effect upon Miss Schuyler. Her anger against the old man had given place to pity, for she decided that what had passed would have excited most men’s suspicions, and it was not in Hetty’s defence alone she made an effort to undeceive him.