"Sam drew them up on purpose for you, yesterday afternoon," said he.
"Who did it?" she asked.
"Samuel Rubb."
He then went on to declare that she might accept all Samuel Rubb's figures as correct.
She was quite willing to accept them, and she strove hard to understand them. It certainly did seem to her that when her money was borrowed somebody must have known that the promised security would not be forthcoming; but perhaps that somebody was old Rubb, whom, as she did not know him, she was quite ready to regard as the villain in the play that was being acted. Her own money, too, was a thing of the past. That fault, if fault there had been, was condoned; and she was angry with herself in that she now thought of it again.
"And now," said her brother, as soon as she had put the papers back, and declared that she understood them. "Now I have something to say to you which I hope you will hear without being angry." He raised himself on his bed as he said this, doing so with difficulty and pain, and turning his face upon her so that he could look into her eyes. "If I didn't know that I was dying I don't think that I could say it to you."
"Say what, Tom?"
She thought of what most terrible thing it might be possible that he should have to communicate. Could it be that he had got hold, or that Rubb and Mackenzie had got hold, of all her fortune, and turned it into unprofitable oilcloth? Could they in any way have made her responsible for their engagements? She wished to trust them; she tried to avoid suspicion; but she feared that things were amiss.
"Samuel Rubb and I have been talking of it, and he thinks it had better come from me," said her brother.
"What had better come?" she asked.