"Then why think of marrying him?"
"It may be—needful."
"Not after this story," Barry Elder, insisted.
"It is not that—now." She forced herself to meet his combative look. "It is because of—Julietta."
"Julietta! . . . Who the deuce is Julietta?"
"Oh, she is my sister, my older sister. I told you about her last night," Maria Angelina reminded him. "She is the one I love so much. . . . And she is not pretty, at all—she is anything but pretty, though she is so good and dear—yet she will never marry unless she has a large dower. And there is nothing in her life if she does not marry. And there is no money for a large dower, but only for a little bit for her and a little bit for me. So they sent me on this visit to America, for here the men do not ask dowers and what was saved on me would help Julietta—and now——"
Borne headlong on her flood of revelation Maria Angelina could not stop to watch the change in Barry Elder's face. And she was utterly unprepared for the immense vehemence of the exclamation which cut into her consciousness with such startling effect that she stopped and gasped and swallowed uncertainly before finishing in an altered key, "And so I must marry in America—for Julietta's dower——"
In an odd voice Barry offered, "You think it your duty—because Byrd is so rich——?"
"I know it is my duty," she gave back, goaded to desperation, "but—but, oh, it is like that cake of yours, Signor—of a nothingness to me within!"
Very abruptly Barry turned from her; he drove his hands deep into his pocket and strode across the room and back. He brought up directly in front of her.