What could she say? It seemed to her nothing, yet she felt acute sorrow for this proud, sensitive, honorable gentleman, who had the cruel humiliation of such a discovery and such a confession, after all his pride, his scorn, and his avoidance of her and of her parents.
In another moment he turned back from the window and walked toward her.
“I came to ask you, if you can, not to let your men of business know of this,” he said more calmly. “I do not think there is any necessity for them to know. I regret unspeakably that I cannot repay this sum at once, but I am a poor man. In a month’s time I hope to be able to do so. Meanwhile, if you can keep my sister’s wretched secret, I shall be very grateful to you.”
Katherine rose and looked at him, with some indignation and much sympathy shining in her large dark eyes.
“Do you think, because I am his daughter, that I have neither decency nor honor? Do not take this matter so deeply to heart. If my father lent the duchess money, she was, on her part, of great use to him. He owed his social position almost entirely to her assistance. I grieve more than I can say that he should have stabbed you from his grave like this. Nor can I imagine why he did so, unless to avenge himself for your persistent refusal to be acquainted with us; a mean motive, indeed, if it was his motive. Pray believe me, Lord Hurstmanceaux. Your sister’s name is safe for ever with me; and as for repaying this money, do not think of it. The debt is not yours.”
“Of my payment of it there must be no dispute,” said Ronald quickly. “It was a strictly business matter. Your father was a business man. I would not ask even a day’s delay were I not forced. I thank you for your promise of silence; it is more than I have deserved.”
He tried to put the matter on a business footing, to endeavor to treat his sister’s receipt of money from Massarene as though it had been a mere affair of agreement and mutual interest; but he was too frank to play a part, and he was conscious that he showed the shame, the disgust, the loathing which he felt for the false position of a woman so near to him.
“Do not speak of money to me,” said Katherine, with an intensity of feeling which surprised him. “I have passed nearly every day since my father’s death in seeing how the riches he loved were put together. I loathe so utterly all he has left to me, that I envy every work-girl who sews for daily bread in her garret. You said rightly on the road in Woldshire that such a fortune as ours is only amassed by wickedness, and cruelty, and fraud. If I could cast it from me as a toad its skin, I would not pause a moment before I did so, and fled from it for ever.”
She was carried out of herself by the forces of feeling, which, for an instant, broke down her reserve, and hurried her into eloquent and unstudied speech.
Hurstmanceaux, at any other time, would have been moved to sympathy with her; but now he was too absorbed in his own humiliation and pain to have any perception of hers.