ugh of
the world now to realize how such letters would be received--with
smiles intended to wound, with the raised eyebrow, the shrugged
shoulder. She wondered, with a chill of panic, how she could ever hope
to make anybody understand what she admitted she herself couldn't
explain. For heaven's sake, _what_ had she been trying to tell this
man? She didn't know any more, except that it hadn't been what these
letters seemed to reveal.

"Well?" said the lazy, pleasant voice, "don't you agree with me that
it would have been barbarous to destroy them? Wonderful, aren't they?
Who would credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme art?
A French court lady might have written them, in a day when folks made
a fine art of love and weren't afraid nor ashamed."

"I must have been stark mad!" said she, twisting her fingers. "How
could I ever have done it? Oh, how?"

"Oh, we all have our moments of genius!" said he, airily.

As he faced her, smiling and urbane, she noted woman-fashion the
superfine quality of his linen, the perfection of every detail of his
appearance, the grace with which he wore his clothes. His manner was
gracious, even courtly. Yet there was about him something so
relentless that for the first time she felt a quiver of fear.

"If my father--or Mr. Mayne--knew this, you would undoubtedly be
shot!" said she, and her eyes flashed.

"Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot? I am well aware
that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely
woman is concerned," he admitted, with a faint sneer. "But when one
plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks. Granted I do
get shot? That wouldn't give you the letters: it would simply hand
them over to prosecuting attorneys and the public press, and they'd be
damning with blood upon them. No, I don't think there'll be any
fireworks--just a sensible deal, in which everybody benefits and
nobody loses."

"The thing is impossible, perfectly impossible."

"I don't see why. Everything has its price and I'm offering you a
pretty stiff one."

"I would rather be burned alive. Marry Mr. Inglesby? _I_? Why, he is
impossible, perfectly impossible!"

"He is nothing of the kind. And he is very much in love with you--you
amount to a grand passion with Inglesby. Also, he has twenty
millions." He added dryly: "You are hard to please."

Mary Virginia waved aside grand passion and twenty millions with a
gesture of ineffable disdain.

"