"I don't understand, Mrs. Bundlecombe! I simply paid you a debt, did I not? If it was right for my father to pay (as he would have done if he had lived), it was right for me to pay; and as it was right for me to pay, it was right for you to ask. And it gave me pleasure, as I told you at the time, so that I object to taking the money back again."
"That is what I said to Alan, but he would not listen to me. 'Miss Campion was not bound to pay her father's debt,' he said, 'any more than Mr. Campion, and therefore it was wrong for you to ask either of them. But to go to a woman,' he said, 'was more than wrong, it was mean; and I can never look in her face again if you do not take it back and beg her pardon.' He can be very stern, my dear, when he is not pleased, and just now I could not disobey him if he was to tell me to go on my knees through London town."
"How did he know that I had paid you?"
"Well, it was yesterday; we had been in great trouble"—and here Mrs. Bundlecombe broke down, having been very near doing it from the moment when she entered the room. Lettice comforted her as well as she could, and made her drink a glass of wine; and so she gradually recovered her voice.
"Well, as I was saying, my dear, in the evening, when we were quiet by ourselves, he said to me, 'Aunt Bessy, I met Miss Campion last night, and I gather from what she told me that you had seen one another in London. You never mentioned that to me. When was it?' I did not want to make a clean breast of it, but he has such a way of cross-questioning one that I could not keep it back; and that is how it all came out. So you must put up with it, for my sake. I dare not touch the money again, was it ever so."
"Then I must speak to Mr. Walcott about it myself, the next time I see him, for I think he has not been just to you."
"Oh yes, my dear, he has! He is always so just, poor boy!" There was an ominous quaver here. "And it is not as if we wanted money. I had three or four hundred from selling the business, and Alan has nearly that every year—but now he gives two pounds a week——"
Then there was another collapse, and Lettice thought it best to let the old woman have her cry out. Only she went over and sat by her side, and took one of the thin hands between her own, and cried just a little to keep her company.
"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Bundlecombe at last, "it is such a comfort to have a woman to talk to. I have not had a good talk to one of my own sex since I came up to London, unless it is the landlady in Montagu Place, and she is a poor old antiquity like myself, with none of your soft and gentle ways. It would do me good to tell you all we have gone through since that bad creature found us out, but I have no right to make you miserable with other people's sorrows. No—I will go away before I begin to be foolish again; and my boy will be waiting for me."
"If you think Mr. Walcott would not object to your telling me, and if it will be any relief to you, do! Indeed, I think I would rather hear it."