“What is it?” he asked.
“Do you mean to tell me that happened to me because Stanley Ryder is my friend?”
“Of course I do,” said he. “Waterman had heard the gossip, and he thought that if Ryder was a rich man, he was a ten-times-richer man.”
Montague could see the colour mount swiftly over Lucy's throat and face. She stood twisting her hands together nervously. “Oh, Allan!” she said. “That is monstrous!”
“It is not of my making. It is the way the world is. I found it out myself, and I tried to point it out to you.”
“But it is horrible!” she cried. “I will not believe it. I will not yield to such things. I will not be coward enough to give up a friend for such a motive!”
“I know the feeling,” said Montague. “I'd stand by you, if it were another man than Stanley Ryder. But I know him better than you, I believe.”
“You don't, Allan, you can't!” she protested. “I tell you he is a good man! He is a man nobody understands—”
Montague shrugged his shoulders. “It is possible,” he said. “I have heard that before. Many men are better than the things they do in this world; at any rate, they like to persuade themselves that they are. But you have no right to wreck your life out of pity for Ryder. He has made his own reputation, and if he had any real care for you, he would not ask you to sacrifice yourself to it.”
“He did not ask me to,” said Lucy. “What I have done, I have done of my own free will. I believe in him, and I will not believe the horrible things that you tell me.”