“That is it! I should like to be helped first, and let reasons come afterward.” The girl’s dark eyes flashed with an imperious light. “What kind of a hero is it who, when you cry for assistance, calmly says: ‘Upon the lines you suggest I do not see my way’? It is high time the books about chivalry were burned, if ‘that’ is the modern man.”
“But you did not cry to a hero for assistance. You merely asked the advice of a lawyer about a mortgage—-if mamma is right about its being a mortgage.”
“It is the same thing,” said Kate, pushing the hassock impatiently with her foot.. “Whether the distressed maiden falls into the water or into debt, the principle is precisely the same.”
“He couldn’t do what you asked, because it would be unfair to his partner. Now, isn’t that it exactly? And wasn’t that honorable? Now, be frank, Kate.”
“The partner would have gone into anything headlong, asking no questions, raising no objections, if I had so much ais lifted my finger. He never would have given, partner a thought.”
Kate, confided this answer to the firelight. She was conscious of a desire just now not to meet her sister’s glance.
“And you like the man without scruples better than the man with them?”
“At least, he is more interesting,” the elder girl said, still with her eyes on the burning logs.
Ethel waited a little for some additional hint as to her sister’s state of mind. When the silence had begun to make itself felt, she said:
“Kate Minster, you don’t mean one word of what you are saying.”