“You must please control yourself, uncle, or I must go indoors,” murmurs Lileth, leaning back in her chair.
“Oh, you’re not inquisitive about hearing any more, ar’n’t you?” begins Mr. Giles, angrily. “You are a woman, although you’ve got brains, and you needn’t pretend——” But the uncle is obliged to nip his ungallant speech in the bud, and afterwards to apologise for it; for his niece rises to leave him, and he feels he cannot afford to quarrel with her at any price.
“Well, uncle,” the young lady inquires, “would you be sorry if these promissory notes were found?”
“Why, of course. They’d ruin the whole bilin’ of us.” Mr. Giles’s answer, coming as it does from a mouth whose chin is sunk upon a desponding breast, is scarcely audible.
“With the exception of Glory?”
“Oh, her money’s all right; can’t touch hers.”
“You have tried, then,” thinks Lileth, “and this is the reason you inquired about it. You are desperate. The game is mine if I play my cards carefully.”
“Well, uncle,” she continues, “there are only two ways that I can see to get rid of this awkward state of affairs.”
“What’s them?” comes the snappish inquiry.
“Either to find out a means of getting at and destroying these P.N.’s, or——” Here Miss Mundella pauses so long that her uncle’s face grows redder than ever with excitement, till at last he bursts out impatiently, “Or what?”