“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.

“Then let me do this for my own sake,” she said.  “Listen to me calmly for a moment.  There is one thing you ought not to forget.  Either I am your wife, which God forbid, and I believe he has forbidden it, or I am simply Katie’s friend.  In case of the first,—­if I have destroyed your happiness and Katie’s, and my own,—­what can money do for me?  Life offers me nothing; there are no possibilities before me so far as joy is concerned; there is nothing left for me but to do the best I know how; we must pick up the little things that lie along the way in life, you and I; there will be nothing else for us; I have made you suffer so much, and you deny me this little thing that can never balance any pain, but is all I can dot?  Why are you so unwise?  Why should we make ourselves more miserable than we need be?”

He sprang up.  These very words—­that he had often said to himself in regard to his own life, that in effect he had said to her that morning—­how harsh they were, how they cut him!  He was tender with his wounded vanity.  What man would like to hear that a woman has nothing before her but misery if she be bound to himself?

“There is one condition,” he cried, harshly, “under which I will accept your money,—­when you love me; when it is the gift of love.”  He laughed bitterly.  “I am safe,” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Archdale, you are safe,” she answered, rising to meet him as he stood before her.  “I can use no such weapons.  It is beneath you to do it.  To say such a thing to me when you know that in any event my great blessing is that I don’t care a pin’s worth for you, that I am not a sighing woman wasting her affection on you, while you—­But I don’t suppose you meant your words as an insult.”