"Why should there be any beating about the bush?" she answered. "I should like it better if you need never have known; but, since you were sure to find it out sooner or later, it might as well come now. What I have done is wise and right, the most satisfactory thing to me, and to others wiser than I. But I wish you would never speak of it."
"Never speak of your coming forward with your whole fortune to make up the loss that this fellow's claim will be to us? Never speak of it!" cried Archdale. "And accept it? From you? You certainly have a flattering opinion of me."
"If it were like any business losses," she said, "it would be different. But this is something nobody could have been prepared for; it needs something outside of the routine to meet it." She waited a moment. "Will you put your case, as you said you were going to do?" she asked. "It will make it clearer, and you will see that there is nothing extraordinary. I think you need not say anything more about—about us, that is all understood. Go on from there."
"A father and a son, then, are nominally in business together," he answered; "the father does the work; the son has a generous share of the profits. Matters are going on swimmingly. Suddenly a claimant turns up who wants a grand slice of the property. He is the only son of the father's elder brother,—a being who was not known to have existed, that is, who was supposed to have died when an infant. The father, my father, was named for him, and my grandfather's will gave the largest share of his fortune to his oldest son, Walter, whom he supposed to be my father, but who was really Gerald Edmonson's father—if the fellow's proofs turn out valid; they are having a thorough overhauling. My uncle does not suffer; it is only we. I am sorry," he added, "that you are liable to be in any way connected with loss, but at the worst it is so remotely that it will never affect you. As for the other matter, the story,"—he stopped with a movement of irritation, perhaps of some deeper feeling,—"that must be borne as best it can, nothing of that falls upon you, certainly. How the matter concerns a young lady at all I can't imagine; so I fail to see what interest you can have in it, or what right to move in it."
"You fail to see?" she said and gave him a smile full of sweetness. It was not a coaxing smile, as if she begged him to reconsider his opinions; it indorsed her own while placidly acquiescing in mutual indifference. "Besides, do you know it was through me that the portrait was found?" And she gave him an account of the discovery. He did not think it necessary to interrupt her by saying that he had heard Edmonson give it with great relish; it seemed a good opportunity to learn whether he had been telling the truth. The story was substantially the same, but the enjoyment of the narrator was absent. "And, then," she added, finishing, "this is not a bad investment."
"It may be now; I can't tell. We were under full sail; we have large ventures, and to give out so much ready money may mean ruin. In a few months, perhaps sooner, you may have the happiness of bearing a bankrupt name."
Elizabeth's eyes were full of pity at the bitter tones in which she heard suffering; she looked away and answered:—
"It is merely justice to me to let me prevent that, if I can."
"Good heavens!" he cried; and, struck with the readiness of her answer, he studied her face. He would have liked to be sure from what motive she was acting. Was it pride, or really pity? The thought of the last made him furious; the other was at least endurable. "And you might not prevent it," he added, watching to catch her eyes as she should turn them back to answer. He was reasonably sure that it was pride.