He looked at her a moment in stupefied silence, then placed his hand very gently on hers.
"And you think that I am so little a man that I would receive what is yours by every right under Heaven? You think that I would rob a girl to enrich myself?"
She lifted her sweet eyes pleadingly.
"It is not that!" she cried earnestly. "It was never meant for me, and I should always feel that I was using that to which I had no right, that I was living upon charity so to speak! It would eternally hang like a stone about my neck, dragging me to a premature death. You must not ask me to do it, Lynde, for indeed I cannot!"
"But consider, dear; even were I to do the contemptible thing you wish, your heirs could one day come forward and demand their rights of me, and there is not a law under the sun that would not give it to them. You see I should but become a trustee, after all, responsible in the years to come for that of which, very likely, I should not take the best of care. There is nothing for it, Leonie, but for you to accept that which is yours by every right, and of which you have been robbed so long."
Her lovely face had grown almost sullen.
A slow, determined light was burning in her eyes, her hand loosened itself from his, and she arose slowly to her feet.
"If that is all that you have come to say, let me settle it with you as I have with Mr. Pryor, who has ceased to bother me upon the subject. I will not touch one cent of that money. I did not sell my sister to a prison for the sake of gaining a few paltry dollars, and I will not have it appear even to myself that I did. If there were no other reason than that, it would still be enough."
Lynde arose and stood before her.
His face was deadly pale and quivering with the suppression he was putting upon himself, but he was very quiet, for all that.