"Very well," she said. "If you accept, as of course you will, for it is right to do it, you will want to see me again to settle details. Probably you won't want to pay the money all at once, and we can arrange that. You will want to be assured that I shan't come down on you again, that my silence will be absolutely unbroken. I can satisfy you as to that too; I have thought out a way. There will be other details to settle. You won't want to see me down here again. You must come to see me in London. I will help you in every way I can."
She gave him an address.
"Now I will go," she said. "Show me a way out without my passing the house."
They walked round the lower end of the lake together, neither of them speaking a word. He took her to a gate leading into a lane. "If you follow that to the left," he said, "you will come to the village."
She went through the gate which he held open for her. Then she turned and looked at him out of level eyes, and said before she walked away: "If you do what I ask, you will hear nothing more of me after we have settled matters. If you don't, I will punish you somehow—in addition—for not receiving me into your house."
CHAPTER III
THE STRAIGHT PATH
"Mr. Clinton has had to go to Bathgate, ma'am. He told me to say he would dine at the club and might be late home. He partic'ly asked that you and Miss Joan—Miss Clinton—shouldn't sit up for him."
The old butler gave his message as if there was more behind it than appeared from his words. Mrs. Clinton, standing in the hall, in her travelling cloak, looked puzzled and a little anxious. It was unlike her husband not to be at home to meet her, especially when she and Joan were returning from so comparatively long a visit—and there was something so very interesting to talk about. And, although he frequently lunched at the County Club in Bathgate, he had not dined there half a dozen times since their marriage.