"Well, tell me."
"I was a fool not to suspect what was going on. She was head over ears in debt. What she must have been spending on clothes it frightens me to think of. She told me that she had got somebody to make them for almost nothing, but I might have known that was nonsense, if I'd thought about it at all. I remember now some woman or other laughing at me when I told her she dressed herself on two hundred a year. 'I suppose you mean two thousand,' she said, and I should think it couldn't have been much less than that. She had things put away that I'd never seen. She didn't disclose half what she owed when you helped us two years ago. Then she'd been playing Bridge with a lot of harpies—Auction—at sixpenny points—and she's no more head for it than an infant in arms."
"Sixpenny points!" repeated the Squire.
"Well, it means she could easily lose forty or fifty pounds in an afternoon, and probably did, often enough. She had to find ready money for that. I haven't got at it all yet, but when we went down to Brummels she didn't know which way to turn, and was desperate—ready to do anything. I know there was a—— No, I can't tell you that; and it doesn't matter. I'm not sure it isn't as well for her, and for me, that she did get the money in the way she did."
The Squire's face was very grave. "You know, Humphrey, if she has deceived you, and is capable of this horrible theft, you ought to satisfy yourself——"
Humphrey broke down again, but recovered himself quickly. "Thank God, I know everything," he said. "Everything that matters. She was terrified. She turned to me. There's nothing between us. It's all partly my fault. I'd been in debt myself, and hadn't helped her to keep straight. And we'd had rows, and she was afraid to tell me things."
"Go on, my dear boy," said the Squire very kindly.
"It's soon told. She heard Lady Sedbergh and Mrs. Amberley talking about the hiding-place."
"Was she in the room?"
"She was just outside. The door was open."