Beatrice made no attempt to question him. Her eyes fell thoughtfully on the gaunt face, and for the first time she appreciated to the full what was great and generous in the nature she had condemned all too often as narrow and unbending. Whatever else he was, this man was no Pharisee. If he was narrow, he allowed himself no license; if unbending, he was at least least of all relenting toward his own conduct. She pitied him and she respected him, even though she could not understand his motives nor guess the weight of the responsibility which he had taken upon himself.
"I can not reproach you with deception," she said at last. "You never pretended that you loved me, and on my side I think the matter was pretty clear. I intended to marry you for your position. Afterward money added a further incentive. I saw the loss of our own fortune coming. Travers warned me on the same day that we became engaged."
A dark flood of indignant blood rushed to Stafford's forehead.
"The man is an unscrupulous adventurer—no doubt he has safeguarded his own interest carefully enough," he exclaimed bitterly.
"You are quite right. His wife has all the money, and he has taken care that it should be well tied up and out of reach. That is what my father did."
He turned to her again.
"Your father?"
"Yes, my father," she repeated, meeting his eyes gravely and unflinchingly. "He tried to do what Travers did. But he wasn't quite so clever. He ran too close to the wind, as he said himself, and they put him in prison. He died there."
He stood looking at her with a new interest. He too, was beginning to understand. The bitter line about the mouth was not the expression of a hard, unfeeling heart after all, then, and the sharp, mocking laugh which had jarred so often on his ears was not the echo of a shallow, worthless character? They were no more than the deep wounds left after a rough battle with a world that knows no pity for those branded with inherited shame and dishonor. He had misjudged her. There were unlimited possibilities of nobility and goodness in the beautiful face lifted to his. But he said nothing of the thoughts that flashed through his mind. In moments of crisis we always speak of what is least important.
"And you managed to keep it a secret in Marut?" he asked.