"And you live alone like this," he said, "without proper service or protection? And, in spite of all that I could say and do, you will not take the miserable pittance which is your own, and which is wasted there in the bank, where it can avail for no one? Do you think this is right to yourself--or kind to me?"
The quiet reproach of his tone disturbed her.
"I do not mean to be unkind," she said, her voice not quite steady, "and indeed I have all that I need. Nora has more than time to attend to me, and as for company, it is because I do not want it that I do not have it."
"And you think you can live without companionship?" he said. "You will find you are mistaken; but of that I have no right to speak. There is one subject, however, on which I do claim this right, and it is the fulfilment of this purpose which has brought me to America."
"You came all this way to see me?" she said, lifting her brows as if in gentle deprecation. "You were always kind." Her voice broke and she said no more.
"It is not a question of kindness," he said. "It is a matter of the simplest right and duty. Will you hear me? Are you able to hear me to-night, or shall I come again to-morrow?"
"Speak now," she said. "I am perfectly well, and am ready to hear whatever you may have to say."
Her voice gave proof of a recovered self-control. The necessity of making this a final interview between them was borne in upon her, and sitting very still and erect, with her hands clasped tightly together, she waited to hear what he might say.
"Your leaving England so suddenly," he began, "was, as I need not say, a disappointment to me. I had hoped to change your mind and purpose concerning the acceptance not only of money which is your own by legal right, but of such as is also yours by every rational law of possession. It was to me an insupportable idea that you should go away without the means of living as becomes your rank and station."
Bettina, with a rather chill smile, shook her head.
"Rank and station I have none," she said. "I have money enough to live as becomes my mother's child; that I am, and no more. It is the only bond to the past which I acknowledge. The name and title which I bore a little while were never mine in a real and true sense. I do not care to speak of it; it is all past; but the very fact that your cousin saw fit to leave me with what you call a mere pittance shows that he felt the distance, the lack of union, between us, as I felt and feel it."