"And so—what?" breathed Miss Chressham.
"I must mend my fortunes even as I ruined them—I must resort to an expedient not pleasant—but I keep you standing"—he rose, his glance sought the clock—"and it is late."
"I know what you mean to do," said Miss Chressham. "And if I had been one with any claim on you"—she checked herself for fear of the extravagant—"I cannot understand how they can force you," she finished.
"They do not think of me," answered Lord Lyndwood. "My lady considers Marius, and Marius himself—I have done nothing that they should think of me."
"But you take the obligation of their future upon you," cried Susannah Chressham.
He answered her in the spirit of the words he had written to Miss Boyle.
"I am the elder—it is but decent; and, after all," he turned to her with a touch of his usual lightness, "'tis the fashion to marry for money."
That glimpse of his old self unnerved her utterly.
"Oh, Rose," she protested in trembling accents, "think what you are doing—why should you sell yourself because of Marius?"