"Ye-es. Just about, I guess."
"And my property—all those buildings that burnt up were mortgaged and—and I couldn't have rebuilt—and everybody knew it—except me. The money that's putting them up again——"
"I arranged about that. But what difference does it make?"
"What did you do it for?"
"I thought you'd feel better to have an income again—and on account of other people, too. It made me hot to have you treated as though you were—just anybody at all—simply because your income happened to be short for a time. And—and I thought you'd rather have it that way than take it from me—at the first," he ended lamely.
She jumped up and confronted him, white with rage.
"How dared you do that? How dared you? How do you suppose I feel, being in this position—to you?"
"I hope you don't feel at all. And besides—But how did you find out about this?"
"Cousin Mary has been here," the girl burst out, losing all idea of keeping anything back. "She had all sorts of things to say: how badly she'd been treated—how she was shipped off East, and I never wrote to her, nothing about my affairs, or that I was married, or anything. She couldn't talk enough. She said everybody sympathized with her, because her prospects were ruined, because the companies I'd insured in wouldn't pay and my land was mortgaged so I couldn't rebuild. She knew that—and she'd never told me. And then she spoke a piece about my conduct in getting married and never telling her a word about it beforehand. She said she was mortified to death to have to learn about my marriage from strangers—strangers—just accidentally. But there wasn't anything she didn't know: that you were a millionaire, but very eccentric and not given to going around like a rational being—in society; and that you had places around in different States and always made it a point not to know your neighbors, so you wouldn't have them come dropping in interfering with you; and that you were amusing yourself now with putting my affairs on their legs again; and how lucky it was for me; and how strange it was, when I was making a brilliant marriage, not to make it, at least, in a dignified, even if not in a brilliant manner, with a church wedding and all. There wasn't anything she didn't know. I believe she used detectives to find out. And she ended up by saying that she had a lovely disposition and would forgive me—I could have killed her—I was her only first cousin's only child—and she was coming here to live."
"The deuce she did!"