But you may very well have spent a year in this country without having heard of it; they would be shocked at Northborough, but nowhere else." Rachel had dropped the card into her lap; she was looking straight at Mr.John Buchanan Steel himself.
"You are very rich," she said gravely.
"I am nothing of the kind," he protested.

"The Duke is rich, if you like, but I had to scrape together to pay him what would replenish his racing-stud, or stand him in a new yacht." But Rachel was not deceived.
"I might have known you were very rich," she murmured, as much to herself as to him; and there was a strange finality in her tone, as though all was over between them; a still more strange regret, involuntary, unconscious, and yet distinct.
"Granting your hypothesis, for the sake of argument," he went on, with his simplest smile; "is it as difficult as ever for the poor rich man to get to heaven ?" Rachel spent some moments in serious thought.

He was wonderfully honest with her; of his central motive alone was she uncertain, unconvinced.

In all else she felt instinctively that he was telling her the truth, telling her even more than he need.

His generous candor was a challenge to her own.
"It may be very small of me," she said at length, "but--somehow--if you had been comparatively poor--I should have been less--ashamed!" And candor begot candor, as it generally will.
"Upon my word," he cried, "you make me sigh for the suburbs and six hundred a year! But you shall know the worst.