"Well, you see," he said, pleadingly, "you seemed so bent on our traveling the proud path of honest labor and honorable poverty, that I was terrified--that is, I was afraid--of--of--well, you know how you talked."
"Yes, I know how I talked. And I also know that before the talk was finished you inquired how I stood as regards aristocracies, and my answer was calculated to relieve your fears."
He was silent a while. Then he said, in a discouraged way:
"I don't see any way out of it. It was a mistake. That is in truth all it was, just a mistake. No harm was meant, no harm in the world. I didn't see how it might some time look. It is my way. I don't seem to see far."
The girl was almost disarmed, for a moment. Then she flared up again.
"An Earl's son! Do earls' sons go about working in lowly callings for their bread and butter?"
"God knows they don't! I have wished they did."
"Do earls' sons sink their degree in a country like this, and come sober and decent to sue for the hand of a born child of poverty when they can go drunk, profane, and steeped in dishonorable debt and buy the pick and choice of the millionaires' daughters of America? You an earl's son! Show me the signs."
"I thank God I am not able--if those are the signs. But yet I am an earl's son and heir. It is all I can say. I wish you would believe me, but you will not. I know no way to persuade you."
She was about to soften again, but his closing remark made her bring her foot down with smart vexation, and she cried out:
"Oh, you drive all patience out of me! Would you have one believe that you haven't your proofs at hand, and yet are what you say you are? You do not put your hand in your pocket now--for you have nothing there. You make a claim like this, and then venture to travel without credentials. These are simply incredibilities. Don't you see that, yourself?"
He cast about in his mind for a defence of some kind or other--hesitated a little, and then said, with difficulty and diffidence:
"I will tell you just the truth, foolish as it will seem to you-- to anybody, I suppose--but it is the truth. I had an ideal--call it a dream, a folly, if you will--but I wanted to renounce the privileges and unfair advantages enjoyed by the nobility and wrung from the nation by force and fraud, and purge myself of my share of those crimes against right and reason, by thenceforth comrading with the poor and humble on equal terms, earning with my own hands the bread I ate, and rising by my own merit if I rose at all."
The young girl scanned his face narrowly while he spoke; and there was something about his simplicity of manner and statement which touched her --touched her almost to the danger point; but she set her grip on the yielding spirit and choked it to quiescence; it could not be wise to surrender to compassion or any kind of sentiment, yet; she must ask one or two more questions. Tracy was reading her face; and what he read there lifted his drooping hopes a little.
"An earl's son to do that! Why, he were a man! A man to love!--oh, more, a man to worship!"
"Why?"
"But he never lived! He is not born, he will not be born. The self- abnegation that could do that--even in utter folly, and hopeless of conveying benefit to any, beyond the mere example--could be mistaken for greatness; why, it would be greatness in this cold age of sordid ideals! A moment--wait--let me finish; I have one question more. Your father is earl of what?"
"Rossmore--and I am Viscount Berkeley!"
The fat was in the fire again. The girl felt so outraged that it was difficult for her to speak.
"How can you venture such a brazen thing! You know that he is dead, and you know that I know it. Oh, to rob the living of name and honors for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the defenceless dead--why it is more than crime, it degrades crime!"
"Oh, listen to me--just a word--don't turn away like that. Don't go-- don't leave me, so--stay one moment. On my honor--"
"Oh, on your honor!"
"On my honor I am what I say! And I will prove it, and you will believe, I know you will.