"Susan had," said Mrs. Clinton. "She was alive then; and she was Humphrey's wife. And wouldn't it have been terrible for us then if she had been punished?"
Dick's face was hard.
"Dick, supposing it had been me!" said Virginia.
"Oh, my dear!" he exclaimed impatiently.
"No, but you must think of it in that way. He stood by her. He couldn't let that happen to her."
"Well," said Dick unwillingly, "when you've said that at every stage it has been a difficult question, perhaps you have said all that can be said. The trouble is that it is that payment to Gotch that is coming home to us. That's why, even if father had thought it right, otherwise, to pay her this money now, it would have been the most foolish thing he could have done. He would have been endorsing that transaction. As it is, he can say quite truly that he refused to do it, and we, who did do it, had no idea what it was done for."
"Yes, I see that," said the Squire, "and I never thought of it before. The two things would have hung together."
"She would have made further demands," said Dick. "We should have been under her thumb."
"She said she would satisfy me of that," said the Squire.
"She may have said so. She would have been too clever for you. She would have drawn us in, until we should have had to do something downright dishonourable—that there couldn't have been any doubt about—or defy her and take the consequences, as we've got to do now. We should have been living under the sword, perhaps for years, never knowing when it was going to fall, shelling out money all the time. Oh, it doesn't do to think about! And no better off at the end of it than we are now."