"But you mean to act fair?"
"I mean to act fair, and return your money."
"Oh, I don't mean that, I don't want that! It was the other affair; you could not do anything so cruel."
Margaret turned short round and faced the stout man, who was trembling, abjectly, from head to foot.
"Mr. Stacy, I have kept silent fifteen years and rather over. If I have not spoken before, you may be certain I never shall. I wanted this money very much, indeed, and shall repay it with less thankfulness because of the mean way in which I forced it from you. Your wife may wear her shawl and watch to the end, for any harm I mean her. Good morning, Mr. Stacy."
Stacy stood just as she left him, thrusting his cane into the turf.
"And she wouldn't have done it after all. What a confounded fool I have made of myself! Two hundred and fifty dollars, and gold up to one-forty at home, which makes another clean hundred. What a mercy it is she didn't ask a thousand, though! She took the starch out of me, through and through. I should have handed over anything she asked."
As Stacy was walking from the park, now and then giving a punch to the turf with his cane, in discontented abstraction, he nearly ran against a man who had just passed the gate, and, looking up angrily, saw Hepworth Closs. The poor craven turned white as he saw that face; but Hepworth was in haste, and took no heed of his agitation.
"You are just the man I most wanted," he said.
"What—what—me? Is it me you wanted?" stammered Stacy, smitten with abject terror.