"My personal obligation--"
"What obligation? I left you to die in the snow.',
"You forget what you did for Mrs. Harley."
"You may eliminate that," retorted the younger man curtly. "You are under
no obligations whatever to me."
"That is very generous of you, Mr. Ridgway, but--"
Ridgway met his eyes directly, cutting his sentence as with a knife.
"'Generous' is the last word to use. It is not a question of generosity at
all. What I mean is that the thing I did was done with no reference
whatever to you. It is between me and her alone. I refuse to consider it as
a service to you, as having anything at all to do with you. I told you that
before. I tell you again."
Harley's spirit winced. This bold claim to a bond with his wife that
excluded him, the scornful thrust of his enemy--he was already beginning to
consider him in that light rather than as a victim--had touched the one
point of human weakness in this money-making Juggernaut. He saw himself for
the moment without illusions, an old man and an unlovable one, without near
kith or kin. He was bitterly aware that the child he had married had been
sold to him by her guardian, under fear of imminent ruin, before her
ignorance of the world had given her experience to judge for herself.
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