Her wits being quick and her questions pertinent, she was soon in
command of the facts. She was soon, too, in command of herself. The
first shock having passed, she was able to go into complete explanations
with courage.
"So that," he concluded, "now that Mr. Guion is safe, if Miss Guion
could only marry--the man--the man she cares for--everything would be
put as nearly right as we can make it."
"And at present they are at a deadlock. She won't marry him if he has to
sell his property, and so forth; and he can't marry her, and live in
debt to you. Is that it?"
"That's it, madame, exactly. You've put it in a nutshell."
She looked at him hardly. "And what has it all got to do with me?"
He looked at her steadily in his turn. "I thought perhaps you wouldn't
care to live in debt to me, either."
She was startled. "Who? I? En voila une idee!"
"I thought," he went on, "that possibly the Guion sense of family
honor--"
"Fiddle-faddle! There's no sense of family honor among Americans. There
can't be. You can only have family honor where, as with us, the family
is the unit; whereas, with you, the unit is the individual. The American
individual may have a sense of honor; but the American family is only a
disintegrated mush.
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