Inglesby is in dead earnest and prepared to go to considerable lengths.  Well, then, as I was about to say:  suppose you agree to accept his proposal!  Being above all things a business man, Mr. Inglesby realizes that gilt-edged collateral should be put up for what you have to offer—­youth, beauty, charm, health, culture, family name, desirable and influential connections, social position of the highest.  In exchange he offers the Inglesby millions, his absolute devotion to yourself, and his hearty support to all your father’s plans and interests.  Observe the last, please; it is highly important.  Besides this, Mayne and Eustis want reform, progress, Demos-with-a-full-dinner-pail, all the wearisome rest of that uplift stuff?  Inglesby will see that they get an undiluted dose of it.  More yet:  if you have any scruples about Mayne, Inglesby will get behind that young man and boost him until he can crow on the weathervane—­when you are Mrs. Inglesby.  A chap like Mayne would be valuable, properly expurgated.  Come, Miss Eustis, that’s fair enough.  If you refuse—­well, it’s up to you to make Eustis understand that he must eliminate himself from politics—­and look out for himself,” he finished ominously.

Mary Virginia rose impetuously.

“I am no longer seventeen, Mr. Hunter.  What, do you honestly think you can frighten a grown woman into believing that a handful of silly letters could possibly be worth all that?  Well, you can’t.  And—­let me remind you that blackmailing women isn’t smiled upon in Carolina.  A hint of this and you’d be ostracized.”

“So would you.  And why use such an extreme term as blackmailing for what really is a very fair offer?” said he, equably.  “The letters are not the only arrows in my quiver, Miss Eustis.  But as you are more interested in them than anything else just now, suppose we run over a few, just to remind you of their amazing nature?” He rose leisurely, opened the safe in a corner of the room, took from the steel money-vault a package, and Mary Virginia recognized her own writing.  Always keeping them under his own hand, he yet allowed her to lean forward and verify what he chose to read.

Her face burned and tears of mortification stung her eyes.  Good heavens, had she been as silly and as sentimental as all that?  But as she listened to his smooth remorseless voice, mortification merged into amazement and amazement into consternation.  Older and wiser now, she saw what ignorance and infatuation had really accomplished, and she realized that a fool can unwittingly pull the universe about her ears.

She was appalled.  It was as if her waking self were confronted by an incredible something her dreaming self had done.  She knew enough 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.