"I am no longer seventeen, Mr. Hunter. What, do you honestly think you can frighten a grown woman into believing that a handful of silly letters could possibly be worth all that? Well, you can't. And—let me remind you that blackmailing women isn't smiled upon in Carolina. A hint of this and you'd be ostracized."
"So would you. And why use such an extreme term as blackmailing for what really is a very fair offer?" said he, equably. "The letters are not the only arrows in my quiver, Miss Eustis. But as you are more interested in them than anything else just now, suppose we run over a few, just to remind you of their amazing nature?" He rose leisurely, opened the safe in a corner of the room, took from the steel money-vault a package, and Mary Virginia recognized her own writing. Always keeping them under his own hand, he yet allowed her to lean forward and verify what he chose to read.
Her face burned and tears of mortification stung her eyes. Good heavens, had she been as silly and as sentimental as all that? But as she listened to his smooth remorseless voice, mortification merged into amazement and amazement into consternation. Older and wiser now, she saw what ignorance and infatuation had really accomplished, and she realized that a fool can unwittingly pull the universe about her ears.
She was appalled. It was as if her waking self were confronted by an incredible something her dreaming self had done. She knew enough of the world now to realize how such letters would be received—with smiles intended to wound, with the raised eyebrow, the shrugged shoulder. She wondered, with a chill of panic, how she could ever hope to make anybody understand what she admitted she herself couldn't explain. For heaven's sake, what had she been trying to tell this man? She didn't know any more, except that it hadn't been what these letters seemed to reveal.
"Well?" said the lazy, pleasant voice, "don't you agree with me that it would have been barbarous to destroy them? Wonderful, aren't they? Who would credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme art? A French court lady might have written them, in a day when folks made a fine art of love and weren't afraid nor ashamed."
"I must have been stark mad!" said she, twisting her fingers. "How could I ever have done it? Oh, how?"
"Oh, we all have our moments of genius!" said he, airily.
As he faced her, smiling and urbane, she noted woman-fashion the superfine quality of his linen, the perfection of every detail of his appearance, the grace with which he wore his clothes. His manner was gracious, even courtly. Yet there was about him something so relentless that for the first time she felt a quiver of fear.
"If my father—or Mr. Mayne—knew this, you would undoubtedly be shot!" said she, and her eyes flashed.
"Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot? I am well aware that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely woman is concerned," he admitted, with a faint sneer. "But when one plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks. Granted I do get shot? That wouldn't give you the letters: it would simply hand them over to prosecuting attorneys and the public press, and they'd be damning with blood upon them. No, I don't think there'll be any fireworks—just a sensible deal, in which everybody benefits and nobody loses."