She looked at him steadily and unflinchingly. Her eyebrows were contracted; her face had hardened.

"d.i.c.k, this isn't fair. It is something that I can't allow," and she spoke slowly and significantly. "Please pull yourself together. You can't go on doing things of this sort. They are dangerous."

"Will you shut up, and stop nagging?"

It was by no means the first time that he had stuck to money when it should have pa.s.sed through his hands to hers. Indeed in all their private transactions, whenever a chance offered, he had promptly cheated her. But during the last six months it had come to her knowledge that he was not confining his trickery to transactions which could be considered as outside the business.

"d.i.c.k, I _must_ go on. It is for your sake as well as mine. There is a principle at stake."

"Rot."

"What you are doing is dishonest. It is embezzlement!" and she turned from him, and looked at the empty fireplace.

With an oath he seized her arm, and swung her round till she faced him again.

"Take that back--or you'll be sorry for it. Do you dare to say that word again? Now we'll see." Holding her with one hand, he swayed her to and fro, as if to force her down to her knees; and his other hand was raised threateningly on a level with her face.

"Are you going to strike me?" And she looked at him with still unflinching eyes. "Why don't you do it? Why are you hesitating? Oh, my G.o.d--it only wanted this to justify everything."

Her courage seemed to increase his hesitation. He lowered the threatening hand, but continued to hold her tightly.

"Say what you mean. Out with it."

"d.i.c.k, you know very well what I mean.... It must be stopped."

"What must be stopped?"

"Your dangerous irregularities."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Someone has been telling you a pack of lies. You're ready to believe any lie against _me_."

"There was a cheque of the firm--made out to bearer--on the third of last month."

"I know nothing about it."

"No more did I. They sent for me to the bank--to look at the signatures and the initials."

"Well?"

"I told them it was all right."

"Well, what about it?"

"There was the hundred pounds that was to be paid Osborn & Gibbs on account--to keep them quiet. It was written off in the books--you showed their acknowledgment for it.... But what's the use of going on? d.i.c.k, pull yourself together. I hold the _proof_ of your folly."

He had let her go, and was walking about the room with his hands in his pockets. When he spoke again, it was sullenly and grumblingly.

"I know nothing whatever about it. I can keep accounts in my head just as well as in the books.... If I seem unbusinesslike--it is because I'm called away so often; and those fools don't understand my system.... I go for facts, and don't bother about all the fuss of book-keeping--which is generally in a muddle whenever I ask for plain statements.... No, you've got on to a wrong track. But I'll go to the bottom of the matter to-morrow--or the day after. I'm busy with other things to-morrow."

"Never mind what's past, d.i.c.k; but go into matters for the future."

"All right. Then say no more. Don't nag me.... And look here. Of course I fully intend to pay you your share. I admit the debt. I owe you fifty pounds."

He had been cowed for a few moments; but now he was recovering his angry bl.u.s.ter.

"That's enough," he went on. "I'll settle as soon as I can. But, upon my word, you _are_ turning into a harpy for ready money. What have you done with all your own? How have you dribbled it away--and let yourself get so low that you have to come howling for a beggarly fifty pounds?"

Mrs. Marsden raised her hands to her forehead, with a gesture that he might interpret as expressive of hopeless despair; but she did not answer him in words.

"Oh, all right," he growled, to himself rather than to her. "The old explanation, I suppose. I'm to be the scapegoat! But I know jolly well where your money has gone. Enid and that squalling brat have pretty near cleared you out. Nothing's too much for Enid to ask.... If I wasn't a fool, I should forbid her the house.... And I will too, if you drive me to it."

It maddened him to think of all the sovereigns that might have c.h.i.n.ked in his pocket, if Enid had not rapaciously intervened.

But in fact Mrs. Marsden had given her daughter no money. And this was not because Enid had refrained from asking for it. Compelled to do so by Kenion, she had more than once reluctantly sued for substantial a.s.sistance.

"Enid dear, don't ask me again. Truly, it is impossible."

Mrs. Marsden stood firm in the att.i.tude that she had adopted when pestered by old Mrs. Kenion at the christening. Of course she gave presents to little Jane. The trifling aid that a young mother needs in rearing a beloved child Enid might be sure of obtaining; but the source of supply for a husband's selfish extravagance had run dry.

"Enid, my darling, I can't do it--I simply _can't_. He should not send you to me. I told his mother that it was useless to expect more from me."

Enid hugged Mrs. Marsden, said she felt a wretch, begged for forgiveness; but soon she had to confess that Charles bore these rebuffs very badly, and that it would be better for Mrs. Marsden never to come any more to the farmhouse. If she came, Charles might insult her.

And now Richard had hinted that he would not allow Enid to come to St.

Saviour's Court. It seemed that soon the mother and daughter would be able to meet only by stealth and on rare occasions.

If the barrier was shattered and broken in front of Enid, it was completely down between Mrs. Marsden and Mr. Prentice. No further pretence was possible to either of them: the strenuous pressure of open facts had forced both to speak more or less plainly when they spoke of Marsden.

Although Marsden always abused the solicitor behind his back, he ran to him for help every time he got into a sc.r.a.pe; and during the last year one might almost say that he had kept Mr. Prentice busily employed. A horrid mess with London book-makers; two rows with the railway company, about cards in a third-cla.s.s carriage, and no ticket in a first-cla.s.s carriage; a fracas with the billiard-marker at his club--one after another, stupid and disgraceful sc.r.a.pes. Mr. Prentice, doing his best for the culprit, each time found it necessary to obtain Mrs. Marsden's instructions, and to put things before her plainly.

The club committee had eventually desired their obstreperous member to forward a resignation; and, on his refusal to do so, had removed his name from their list. Mr. Marsden, who in his boastful pride once considered himself eligible for the select company of the County gentlemen, had thus been ignominiously expelled from the large society of petty tradesmen, clerks, tag, rag, and bobtail, known as the Mallingbridge Conservative.

At last, after a discussion concerning one of these sc.r.a.pes, Mr.

Prentice abandoned the slightest shadow of pretence, and gave his old client the plainest conceivable advice.

"Screw yourself up to strong measures," said Mr. Prentice, "and get rid of him."

"How could I--even if I were willing?"

"Go for a divorce."

"I shouldn't be given one."

"I think you would."

They were in Mr. Prentice's room--the fine panelled room with the two tall Queen Anne windows, and the pleasant view up Hill Street, and through the side street into Trinity Square. Mrs. Marsden sat facing the light, her back towards the big safe and the racks of tin boxes; and Mr.

Prentice, seated by his table, looked at her gravely and watched her changing expression while he spoke.

"I think that you would obtain your divorce," he repeated.