She broke off in sudden confusion, and he drew a swift breath.
"You were yourself, and I told you that nothing else mattered." His tone was very low.
"But I'm something else, now." There was a note of shy, wistful eagerness in her voice. "I—I'm Willa Murdaugh and that seems to mean a lot, up in New York. I'm not just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, I'm going to be a lady, like your sister——"
"You will be a much more important one, with a highly exalted social position and hosts of influential friends," he responded slowly. "You will meet her, she is an acquaintance of the Halsteads and their set, but you will find her a simple, unfashionable girl, compared to the rest. If you had gone to make your home with her, as I suggested, you would not have known the smart crowd that will flock about you now, but clever people who have done or are doing big things. I wonder how the social life will strike you?"
"All of a heap, I expect," she replied, absently. Her voice was colorless, stunned. "That was what you meant, that I should go and live with your sister? And you, would you have been there, too?"
"I?" he laughed with a trace of bitterness. "I am a rolling stone, Miss Murdaugh. My work calls me to the ends of the earth, but I would probably have looked in on you every few years to say 'hello.' However, you would scarcely have been with my sister as long as that. Some lucky fellow would have persuaded you to make him happy. You will be a great social success——"
"As if I cared!" She stopped him with her familiar little gesture. "I—I didn't just understand what you meant. I thought—but it doesn't matter anyway, does it? I've got to get in the game anyway, but you don't suppose I want to, do you? You don't suppose I want the money of that old man who stacked the cards against my poor father, or care about these Halstead people that never knew I was alive? I am doing it because I think Dad would want me to, and because it will help me in something else I've set out to do."
"The thing you spoke of, that you could not let me or anyone in on?" he asked in surprise. "Haven't you relinquished it, whatever it was? You'll be too much taken up with your new life to remember old plans and ideas when you plunge into the society game."
"'Relinquish'?" she repeated, and he saw her whole form grow tense and rigid. "Why, it's what I'm living for—what I'm going through with this inheritance outfit for! Dad said the Indians were right, they never forget a kindness or an injury. I'm like them, in that. I'll never forget, never, until the score is wiped clean!"
"Someone has hurt you?" he demanded. "You have another trouble, aside from your grief? The government will take care of El Negrito, it must be something else. Won't you tell me? It may be that I can help, in some way. I—I would do anything for you!"