Her voice was pleading. It affected him no more than by the sense of the words it carried. Perhaps if this had been her tone from the first it might have done so.
But the words themselves did affect him. They were true. If it could be regarded as only help that she wanted!
"This time," she said, "you wouldn't be doing injury to a living soul. You would only be doing something towards setting right a wrong. You wouldn't even be doing anything that the law would blame you for. Susan is dead. There is nobody who could be prosecuted."
"I could pay Sedbergh his money," he said slowly.
"Yes, you could do that," she took him up eagerly. "Honourably, now. He could take it without any scruple. The Sedberghs would be sorry for me, I think. They would be glad that I had been helped. They couldn't blame you. And who else could?"
The Squire knitted his brows hard, and tried to think, but couldn't. He could only feel. Release might be in view from the chains that already seemed to have begun to rust on him.
"I can't see my way," he said. "I must think it over."
With her eyes fixed sharply and anxiously on him, she had seemed to be reading his very thoughts. She had influenced him; she could do nothing more by repetition of her plea; he must have time to think it over—and would have time, whatever she might say; he was that sort of man.
She rose from the seat. "I know you must have time," she said. "I know that the sum I ask for is a large one, especially if you are going to add another seven thousand on to it; but I can't take less. I won't take less. But remember what it buys you, Mr. Clinton, when you think it over. If you refuse me this money which you owe me for what you have done to me, if ever man owed woman anything, I shall speak out and bring it home to you. I would rather have peace for the rest of my days, and ease, than perpetual fighting. But I shall be ready to fight, if you refuse me, for I shall get something out of that."
He rose too. "You needn't go over all that again," he said. "If I consider it right to do this I will do it. If not, no threats will weigh with me."