“For me?”
“Yes; you can play with my heart, trifle with my pride, marry my waiting-maid before my eyes, never asking whence came the freedom which enables you to do all these things, or what price your mother is paying for the sins her forbearance was not sufficient to make you regret and forsake.”
“Mother, what do you mean? I do not understand you at all. What price have you been paying for sins of mine?”
She smiled ironically.
“It is time you showed some curiosity on the subject.” Then, with a side glance at her husband, full of bitterness and despair, she went on: “Did you ever ask yourself where the money came from with which I paid your debts two years ago, in Paris?”
“No—that is, I supposed, of course, it came out of your own pocket. Mr. Winchester is a rich man—”
“And I, his wife, must therefore be a rich woman. Well, I may be; but even rich women do not always have a hundred thousand francs at their disposal; and that sum I gave you, and you took from me. Where do you think I obtained it? Not from him, as his face only too plainly testifies.”
“Where, then, mother—where, then? Tell me, for I—”
But Mr. Winchester had taken a step forward, and his face was very white.