"Go on--jabber, jabber."

"Really now. What is the grievance? You have sold your business and been paid for it. Of your own free will, you have parted with your interests.

You have renounced all claims upon your wife."

"Yes--but I've been tricked into doing it."

"Where's the trick?"

"She made me think we were done."

"So you were. You came to her and told her so. You prevailed on her to agree to the sale. It wasn't her proposition, but yours."

"I shouldn't have made it if I had known."

"You thought you had got all you could out of her--and that was the fact. You thought she was poor; and you find that she has made a good investment--with her own private funds, mark you,--and she is therefore not poor, but rather the reverse. Where's your quarrel with that?"

"I am ent.i.tled to my share in her investment."

"Oh, bosh! That's simply absurd."

Marsden was standing up, resting his red hands on the back of a chair.

Now he moved the chair to Mr. Prentice's end of the table, sat down, and spoke in an eager whisper.

"Prentice, hostile or not, you _are_ honest. I call on you to see fair play. She can't do this, can she?"

"She _has_ done it," said Prentice feebly.

"But tell her it isn't fair. She knows you're straight, and above board.

It's all mighty fine to bowl me out--and perhaps you don't think I deserve any pity. But still, speak for me. She can't round on me like this--she can't say 'Your firm is killed, and I've transferred myself across the road to the firm that killed it.' Surely the law wouldn't allow her to spoof me like that?"

But sharp-eared Mr. Collins had heard the whisper.

"Prentice, don't answer him. Mr. Marsden, I'll answer that question. I answer for the law. I am your wife's legal adviser in all this. Please address me, sir."

Marsden turned with a final burst of fierce rage.

"Then I say, curse you, I'll have the law on it."

"Now look here, Marsden," and Mr. Collins's voice changed once more--to an uncompromisingly ugly tone. "If you want the law, we'll give you your bellyful of the law."

"A good deal more than you'll like," said Bence, failing to ask for moderation of language.

"Your wife," Collins went on, "dropped a plain hint just now; and I was very pleased to hear it, because I thought you'd understand. But I see I must amplify it for you. Mrs. Marsden has been good enough to entrust to my care all her private papers--that is, papers she has kept private to oblige you."

"I--I don't in the least follow--what you're driving at."

"Oh, you know what I'm talking about. Specimens of your handwriting, and so on--papers that the law would call incriminating doc.u.ments,--papers that the law would call conclusive evidence,--papers that the law would call forgeries."

"Prentice! Don't believe him."

"Never mind Mr. Prentice. Attend to me.... Ah-ha,--you're beginning to look rather foolish.... Now, how much law do you want?"

"I think," said Bence, "if he has time to get safely out of the country, that's all the law he ought to ask for."

Marsden was cowed and beaten. He sat heavily and limply on his chair, sprawling one red hand across the table, and nervously fingering his lips with the other hand.

"Well," said Collins mockingly, "what are you going to do--keep your bargain, or go to law with us?"

Marsden was thoroughly cowed and beaten. He cleared his throat several times, and even then spoke huskily.

"I must say a word or two to my wife;" and he rose from his chair slowly.... "Of course, when a man's down, everyone can jump on him."

And he went over to Mrs. Marsden, stooped, and whispered.

Collins tapped his nose jocosely, and smiled at Mr. Prentice--seeming to say without words, "What do you think of that, old boy? That's the way Hyde & Collins tackle this sort of troublesome customer."

Little Bence, resuming his dandified air and ostentatiously leaving Mrs.

Marsden and her husband to whisper together, picked up his glossy hat, and dusted it with a neatly folded silk handkerchief.

"Jane," said Marsden pleadingly, almost whimperingly, "you come out on top--and I mustn't bear malice. But you _have_ been hard--cruelly hard."

"d.i.c.k," said Mrs. Marsden, in a shaky whisper, "don't reproach me."

"But don't you think you have been a _little_ hard."

"No. Or it is _you_ who have made me hard. I wasn't hard--once. And remember this, d.i.c.k. Even at the end, I tried to get one word of tenderness from you--to make you say you cared just a little for what happened to me. But no--"

"I _did_ care."

"No. You hadn't one kind word--or one kind thought. You and your--your companion were going to new scenes, new hopes; and I might be left to starve."

"Jane, I swear I thought you were all right. I said so, again and again.

And now, you're rich--you're really rolling in money; and it is I who may starve. Jane--for auld lang syne--do a bit more for me."

"No;" and she shook her head resolutely.

"Jane! Be like yourself.... I'm not grasping or avaricious. But at least I ought to get as much as the business fetched. Let me have that extra fifteen hundred."

"Well--perhaps. I'll think about it."

"Do it now--hand over now, or they'll only persuade you not to."

"No--but I'll give it you later. I promise. I'll send it to your address in California--as soon as I am sure that you have really arrived there."

"All right. Thanks. Jane--I'll say it once again. I wish you luck.

You're a good plucked 'un--I always knew that."

Then the meeting broke up.