“There’s nothing on earth so tiresome as charming women. They’re all exactly alike,” asserted he.
“Thank you,” his guest exclaimed, bowing.
“Oh, nobody could pretend that you’re exactly alike,” he assured her hastily. “I own at once that you’re delightfully different. But Burrell has no knack for character drawing.”
“You’re extremely flattering. But aren’t you taking a slightly one-sided point of view? Let us grant, for the sake of the argument, that it is Johannah’s bad luck to be charming and good-looking. Nevertheless, she still has claims on you.”
“Has she?”
“She’s your cousin.”
“Oh, by the left hand,” said he.
She stared for an instant, biting her lip. Then she laughed.
“And only my second or third cousin at that,” he went on serenely.
She looked at him with eyes that were half whimsical, half pleading. “Would you mind being quite serious for a moment?” she asked. “Because Johannah’s situation, absurd as it seems, really is terribly serious for Johannah. I should like to submit it to your better judgment. We’ll drop the question of cousinship, if you wish—though it’s the simple fact that you’re her only blood-relation in this country, where she feels herself the forlornest sort of alien. She’s passed her entire life in Italy and France, you know, and this is the first visit she’s made to England since her childhood. But we’ll drop the question of cousinship. At any rate, Johannah is a human being. Well, consider her plight a little. She finds herself in the most painful, the most humiliating circumstances that can be imagined; and you’re the only person living who can make them easier for her. Involuntarily—in spite of herself—she’s come into possession of a fortune that naturally, morally, belongs to you. She can’t help it. It’s been left to her by will—by the will of a man who never saw her, never had any kind of relations with her, but chose her for his heir just because her mother, who died when Johannah was a baby, had chanced to be his cousin. And there the poor girl is. Can’t you see how like a thief she must feel at the best? Can’t you see how much worse you make it for her, when she holds out her hand, and you refuse to take it? Is that magnanimous of you? Isn’t it cruel? You couldn’t treat her with greater unkindness if she’d actually designed, and schemed, and intrigued, to do you out of your inheritance, instead of coming into it in the passive way she has. After all, she’s a human being, she’s a woman. Think of her pride.”