"Oh, don't be absurd," she said. "I never really thought that you had looked on that transaction as blackmail; I only said so because I wanted to make you smart. Is it likely that I should be fool enough to suggest such a thing to you? Besides, whatever you may think of me, I am not a blackmailer; it wouldn't suit my book. You are not very clever, you know, Mr. Clinton. I will tell you what I want, and why I think you ought to help me to get it, as carefully as I can; and you must listen to me and try and understand it."
Poor man! How could he help listening to her, with so much at stake!
"The mischief is done," she said. "I am innocent, but I am smirched—poor me!—and although I could make you suffer, and would, I tell you frankly, if I could do it without hurting myself, I don't believe I could ever get back—not all the way. I don't know that I want to try; I am not young now, whatever I look, and I have no heart for the struggle. I am young enough, at any rate, to enjoy my life, if I can begin it again, in quite new surroundings, and not dogged by poverty. It isn't much I want. What is ten thousand pounds for life to a woman like me, who has spent that in a year? I have something of my own, but not much. This would make me secure against that horrible wolf at the door, which frightens me more than anything."
He was about to speak, but she silenced him with a lift of the hand, and said, "Let me go on, please. Why should you give it to me? you were going to ask—I drop the pretence of a loan, though you can call it that if you like. Because you are the only person I can ask it of. It is compensation; and nobody but you—except Humphrey, of course—has offended against me. Sedbergh thinks I stole the star, and so does Mary Sedbergh, and it is true that that is all I was actually found guilty of. Under the circumstances they are not to be blamed. The coincidences—and the perjury—were too strong for me. They owe me nothing—except out of kindness to an old friend whom they had done injustice to."
"If you want me to listen to you in patience," said the Squire angrily, "you'll drop that impudent pretence of not having stolen the star. My daughter saw you at the cupboard; and you would have stolen the necklace if you could. You hardly take the trouble to hide that you're lying. You must take me for a fool."
"Shall I drop it?" she asked. "I think perhaps I will, with you. It is quite safe. I can take it up again if you drive me to action; and nobody will believe that I could have been such a fool as to admit to you that I had stolen it."
"You infamous creature!" he cried. "That was the plea you used before. It didn't save you, and it won't save you this time."
She saw that she had made a mistake, but answered, "Well, no; perhaps it wouldn't save me. But you see the question wouldn't arise. If I did take it, I couldn't be punished for taking it twice. I could confess it to all the world now, and nothing further would happen. Besides, you see, it will be you who will be standing in the dock, for an offence into which the question of the star wouldn't come."
His eyes dropped. Her specious reasoning—before she had made the mistake of interrupting it with her insolent cynicism—had made some way with him, and allowed his mind to detach itself ever so little from that frightful picture.
"Oh, you can't be prepared to face that," she said, pursuing her recovered advantage; "and it would be too absurd—quixotic. The same reasons hold good here as they did before, when you allowed silence to be kept, and were prepared to pay not much less than I ask for. You save your children as well as yourself. Think what it would mean for that young girl of yours, when the time came for her to be married."