Burr's face flashed white. “What right have you to question me like this?” he demanded.
“But you would not take the price, after all,” said Lot, as if he had been answered, instead of questioned. Then he looked up at his cousin with something like kindness in his blue eyes. “It proves the truth of what I've thought before,” he said, “that oftentimes a man has to sting his own honor with his own deeds to know 'tis in him.”
“My honor is my own lookout,” Burr said, harshly.
“And you've looked out for it better than I thought,” Lot returned.
Burr made another motion towards the door. “I can't stand here any longer,” he said. “I'll go for the deed.” Margaret Bean, moving as softly as she could in her starched draperies, fled back to the kitchen.
“Wait a minute,” Lot said.
“Well,” returned Burr, impatiently.
Lot got up, went over to the mantel-shelf, and stood there a minute, leaning against it, his face hidden. When he looked at Burr again he was so white that his cousin started. “Are you sick?” he cried, with harsh concern.
Lot smiled with stiff lips. “Only with the life-sickness that smites the child when it enters the world, and makes it weep with its first breath,” he answered.
“If you want to say anything to me, Lot, talk like a man, and not a book,” Burr cried out, with another step towards the door; and yet he spoke kindly enough, for there was something in his cousin's face which aroused his pity.