"Wait a moment. Hear me out. Then repeat your declaration, if you choose. They say I'm avaricious. Rich, grasping, penurious. Suppose I told you I'm poor? That the bulk of my fortune was squandered long ago? That I've had a hard time to keep my nose, and this girl's here, above water? Would you wish to marry her, still?"
"Certainly. Why not?"
"You say that because you don't believe it's true."
"I say it because, saving your presence, I don't care a continental whether it's true or not. Your money or the lack of it, is nothing to me. I care for Katherine!"
"Suppose I told you Katherine's grandfather, the man I married, was a coward and a liar, as they said your grandfather was? Suppose I told you her father, my son, followed in his father's footsteps?"
Dr. Ballard shrugged impatiently. "It's Katherine I want for my wife. It's not her dead and buried ancestors. I have to deal with Katherine's faults and virtues, not those of her family."
"You hear that, Katherine? It's your faults and virtues he——"
Madam Crewe put the question with a sort of bravado, but her utterance was slightly unsteady. She did not conclude her sentence.
Katherine had grown very white.
When she did not respond, the old woman demanded peevishly, "Well, well? What have you to say for yourself? Can't you speak?"