“Well?” said the lazy, pleasant voice, “don’t you agree with me that it would have been barbarous to destroy them?  Wonderful, aren’t they?  Who would credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme art?  A French court lady might have written them, in a day when folks made a fine art of love and weren’t afraid nor ashamed.”

“I must have been stark mad!” said she, twisting her fingers.  “How could I ever have done it?  Oh, how?”

“Oh, we all have our moments of genius!” said he, airily.

As he faced her, smiling and urbane, she noted woman-fashion the superfine quality of his linen, the perfection of every detail of his appearance, the grace with which he wore his clothes.  His manner was gracious, even courtly.  Yet there was about him something so relentless that for the first time she felt a quiver of fear.

“If my father—­or Mr. Mayne—­knew this, you would undoubtedly be shot!” said she, and her eyes flashed.

“Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot?  I am well aware that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely woman is concerned,” he admitted, with a faint sneer.  “But when one plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks.  Granted I do get shot?  That wouldn’t give you the letters:  it would simply hand them over to prosecuting attorneys and the public press, and they’d be damning with blood upon them.  No, I don’t think there’ll be any fireworks—­just a sensible deal, in which everybody benefits and nobody loses.”

“The thing is impossible, perfectly impossible.”

“I don’t see why.  Everything has its price and I’m offering you a pretty stiff one.”

“I would rather be burned alive.  Marry Mr. Inglesby? I?  Why, he is impossible, perfectly impossible!”

“He is nothing of the kind.  And he is very much in love with you—­you amount to a grand passion with Inglesby.  Also, he has twenty millions.”  He added dryly:  “You are hard to please.”

Mary Virginia waved aside grand passion and twenty millions with a gesture of ineffable disdain.

“Even if I were weak and silly enough to take you seriously, do you imagine my father would ever consent?  He would despise me.  He would rather see me dead.”

“Oh, no, he wouldn’t.  Nobody can afford to despise a woman with twenty millions.  It isn’t in human nature.  Particularly when you save Mr. James Eustis himself from coming a breakneck cropper, to say the very least.”

For the moment she missed the significance of that last remark.

“I repeat that I would rather be burned alive.  I despise the man!” said she, passionately.

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t.”  His manner was a bit contemptuous.  “And you’d soon get used to him.  Women and cats are like that.  They may squall and scratch a bit at first, but the saucer of cream reconciles them, and presently they are quite at home and purring, the sensible creatures!  You’ll end by liking him very well.”