"Which can it be," answered Alfred moodily, "but friend?"
"Out-and-out friend, eh? No half-measures--thorough!"
"Thorough, out-and-out!" responded Alfred a little less despondently.
"No beating about the bush? No concealments, no double-dealing?"
"None."
"And you say this," pursued Mr. Sheldrake with remorseless tenacity--he had been so goaded that it was necessary he should revenge himself upon some one--"you say this not because it is for your interest to say it--not because you are in my debt, and I could shut you up at any moment I please--but because you believe it, because you know that I am straightforward, honest-minded, open-hearted?"
"What other motive can I have for saying it?"
"But say it plainly. You wish me to continue your friend, and to be my friend, for the reasons that I have given?"
"Yes, for those reasons, and no other." And as Alfred spoke the lie which was forced from him by fear, Mr. Sheldrake laughed lightly, and with an open scorn of the avowal, which brought the blood to the younger man's cheek.
It brought the blood also to the cheek of another person, not in the room. Crouching outside the door, at the top of the landing, was Lizzie, listening with beating heart, and hearing every word that passed. She could see clearly everything in the room, and being in the dark herself, could not be detected. A small lumber-room, the door of which she had partly opened, and which swung noiselessly on its hinges, was ready to afford her the means of concealment should the suspicions of Mr. Sheldrake be aroused. She saw the insolent triumphant manner of Mr. Sheldrake, and she thought for a moment that if she were a man, she would kill him; but she saw also the abject manner of her lover, and her passion was subdued by fear.