“I want to understand,” she said presently. “Did you ever mean to give us the money?”
“Yes, upon my honour I——”
“Are you sure?” She forced him to look her in the face; he was silent. She rose, took a Japanese fan from a side table, and sat down again; the lower part of her face was now hidden by the fan; Byers saw nothing but her eyes. “What did you mean?” she asked. “You’ve made us all—the Prince, and his friends, and me—look very silly. How did that help you? I don’t see what you could get out of that.”
She was looking at him now as though she thought him mad; she could not see what he had got out of it; it had not yet crossed her mind that there had been money to be got out of it; so ignorant was she, with all her shrewdness, with all her resolution.
“And I understood that you were such a clever far-seeing man,” she went on. “Lady Craigennoch always told me so; she said I could trust you in anything. Do tell me about it, Mr Byers.”
“I can’t explain it to you,” he began. “You—you wouldn’t——”
“Yes, I should understand it if you told me,” she insisted.
If he told her he was a liar and a thief, she would understand. Probably she would. But he did not think that she would understand the transaction if he used any less plain language about it. And that language was not only hard to use to her, but struck strangely on his own head and his own heart. Surely there must be other terms in which to describe his part in the transaction? There were plenty such in the City; were there none in Palace Gate?
“It’s a matter of business——” again he began.
She stopped him with an imperious wave of the fan. Her eyes grew animated with a sudden enlightenment; she looked at him for a moment or two, and then asked, “Have you been making money out of it somehow?” He did not answer. “How, please?” she asked.