“He loves you. As my son-in-law he would be no longer my creditor.”
She drew away her hand with a shudder.
“Father,” said she, in a dry hard voice which startled him, “do you really mean this?”
“Is it a time for jesting?” said he. “I ask nothing of you. I merely state facts. You dislike him—there is an end of it. Only remember we are not now dealing with Robert Ratman, but with an injured man who has not had a fair chance. The good in him,” continued the father, deluded by the passive look on his daughter’s face, and becoming suddenly warm in his championship of the absent creditor, “has been smothered; but for aught we know it may still be there. A wife—”
She stopped him with a peremptory motion of her hand.
“Please do not say anything more. Your debt—when does it fall due?”
“In a week or ten days, my child. Consider—”
She interrupted again.
“No more, please,” she said, almost imploringly. “I will think what can be done to help you in a week. Good-bye, dear father.”
She stooped, with face as white as marble, and touched his forehead with her cold lips.