“Pray do not let the fact of my sex influence you. I dare say I have many male relatives, but they are, I believe, navvies, and colliers, and laborers, and the like, who would not be foemen worthy of your patrician steel.”
She spoke with a certain cold and careless contempt which brought the blood to his cheeks.
“You have full right to condemn my sister, but not to suppose what you do not know,” he said with some embarrassment. “The debt was a matter of business, as a matter of business I treat it, and refund the money to you, who are the sole living representative of the dead creditor.”
“There are many debts due to him. I have cancelled them all. They are all due from persons of your great world. He thought their suffrages worth buying. I do not. And I think the people who sell oranges and apples in the streets are superior to those who sell their prestige, their patronage, or their company.”
Hurstmanceaux winced as he heard her, like a high-mettled horse flicked with the whip.
“I am wholly of your opinion,” he said coldly. “But in this instance the debt is paid so far as a debt ever can be; and you are bound to take the payment of it. You are not bound to preserve silence on the matter, but if you do so you will make me grateful.”
“I have told you that you may be certain of my silence,” she said, with some impatience. “That is elementary honor which even I, low-born as I am, can understand!”
“Honor does not require silence of you,” said Hurstmanceaux. “But such silence will be a charity to us.”
“Call it what you will,” she replied curtly, “you may count on it.”
“If you are a gentlewoman, madam,” he added, in his coldest and most courteous manner, “you must also understand that you render my position insupportable unless you accept that money.”