"Oh, let's have an end of this," he said, with agonised impatience. "What have you come here for? What do you want?"
Her manner changed. "Yes, we will have an end of it," she said, with quick scorn. "It's useless to tell you what I think of your meanness, and how I despise your cowardice. I should have respected you much more if you had paid your blackmail down like a man, and then kept quiet about it, instead of running snivelling about trying to salve your own conscience. But a man who can believe as you have has no shame. You can't touch him by showing him up to himself. You can, though, by making him pay for it. And I'm going to make you pay—to the last rag of reputation you've got left."
She clenched her fist, and bent towards him fiercely. On his fathomless trouble her change of attitude made no new impression. What mattered it whether she sneered or stormed? The truth would be known; the pit of disgrace was already yawning for him.
"I can't touch Susan," she went on. "If I could, I'd drag her out of her grave and set her up for all the world to mock at."
The intensity with which she said this affected him not merely to horror. He began to see dimly what an adversary he had to cope with, and the burning rage against circumstance that must consume her. Even if all he had comforted himself with was true—if she was guilty of stealing the diamonds, and had suffered for that alone—still, she had suffered for Susan's crime. For if Susan had been found out, she would, or might, have gone undetected. How that knowledge must smoulder or blaze in her mind, night and day—all the worse if she was partly guilty! He might expect no mercy from her.
"I will make her name a mockery," she cried, "and I'll make yours stink in the nostrils of every decent honest man and woman in the country. I've only to tell my story. You can't deny it; you won't be allowed to. But I'll do more than that. I'll make you stand where I stood; first in the police court, then in the dock—you and Humphrey together, and your other son too and his wife, who paid the money. Tell your story then, and see what's thought of you! Some of them may get off—but you won't. You'll go where I went—to a vile and horrible prison, where you'll be with the scum of the earth; where you'll have plenty of time to think it all over, and whether it wouldn't have been better for you, after all, to tell the truth and shame the devil,—you dastardly coward!"
Her voice had risen almost to a shriek. He looked round him, in fear that it would bring someone to the scene. But the lake was retired, and seldom visited. They were quite alone.
"Yes, I suppose you would like to move away," she said in a voice more controlled, but still quivering with rage. "You can't run away. You'll have to face it now; you and your whole family, guilty and innocent. I'll make you suffer through them, as well as in yourself. You'll never wipe off the blot, never in all your life, not even when you come out of prison and come back here—a man that nobody will speak to again, for all your wealth and position. You can think of that when you're in your cell. They give you plenty of time to think. It's not more than I suffered; it's not so much, because I was innocent. But I'd no children and grandchildren to make it worse. You have. It's your name you've blackened. Clinton will mean thief, and conspirator, and everything that's vile long after you are dead."
He had heard enough. He got up, turned his back on her, and began to walk very slowly across the little lawn, his head bent. She watched him with a look of hate, which gradually faded to scorn, then to cunning, then to expectation. But it became dismay when, having crossed the grass, he did not turn, but kept on between the shrubs, as if he had forgotten her, and were going to leave her there alone.
She had to call to him. "Where are you going?"