'So many of them have charming women for their friends.'
'Oh, you don't often yield!'
'No, not often, but—you were an early subscriber to "The Sentinel."'
It would be untrue to say that the sort of negotiation on which she was now engaged was altogether unpleasant to Mrs. Bonfill. Let her not be called a busybody; but she was a born intermediary. A gratifying sense of power mingled with the natural pain. She wired to Constantine Blair, 'All well if X. is reasonable,' and sent a line asking Beaufort Chance to call.
Chance had got out of Dramoffskys prosperously. His profit was good, though not what it had been going to reach but for Liffey's article. Yet he was content; the article and the whispers had frightened him, but he hoped that he would now be safe. He meant to run no more risks, to walk no more so near the line, certainly never to cross it. A sinner who has reached this frame of mind generally persuades himself that he can and ought to escape punishment; else where is the virtue—or where, anyhow, the sweetness—that we find attributed to penitence? And surely he had been ill-used enough—thanks to Trix Trevalla!
In this mood he was all unprepared for the blow that his friend Mrs. Bonfill dealt him. He began defiantly. What Liffey threatened, what his colleagues suspected, he met by angry assertions of innocence, by insisting that a plain statement would put them all down, by indignation that she should believe such things of him, and make herself the mouthpiece of such accusations. In fine, he blustered, while she sat in sad silence, waiting to produce her last card. When she said, 'Mr. Fricker employed a man named Clarkson?' he came to a sudden stop in his striding about the room; his face turned red, he looked at her with a quick furtive air. 'Well, he's stolen a letter of yours.'
'What letter?' he burst out.
With pity Mrs. Bonfill saw how easily his cloak of unassailable innocence fell away from him.
She knew nothing of the letter save what Liffey had told her.
'It's to Mr. Fricker, and it's dated the 24th,' said she.