There was silence in the little room for a few seconds, a silence all complete save for the solemn ticking of a little French clock over the hearth. Sir John Ayloffe lounging on the settee with one firm leg clad in the new-fashioned tight breeches stretched out at full length, the other doubled inwards, so that the satin shimmered and crackled over his knee, his jewelled hands toying with the lace cravat, or with the dark curls of his periwig, looked now the picture of supreme indifference.
It almost seemed as if £12,000 more or less in his vest pocket would affect him not at all. But the fleshy lids had half-closed over the prominent eyes, and from beneath their folds he was watching the fair young widow, who made no attempt to hide her hesitancy and her perturbation.
He knew quite well that his personality, the weight of his whole individuality, would win against her prudence in the end. He was fully aware that among the crowd of her several adorers, she had no one to whom she could confide her present troubles, no one whose aid she could with so much surety invoke. Few were so resourceful, none quite so unscrupulous, as Sir John Ayloffe where his own interests were at stake.
That £12,000 which was to be his price would mean the final ending of his shiftless career. He felt himself getting older every day, and the thought of what the morrow might bring—a morrow when he would no longer be active and alert, neither amusing nor interesting to those whose company was a necessity to his livelihood—that thought was embittering his present life, until at times he wondered whether a self-inflicted sword thrust to end a miserable existence were not the most desirable contingency after all.
How he would earn that £12,000 he did not know as yet. His secret was that he did not know. But he had lived for the past twenty years in sublime ignorance of the various shifts which he might be put to from day to day, and he knew that he could trust to his imagination to find a means now, when the result would mean security in old age, peace from that eternal war against chance—almost a fortune in these days when money was scarce after the great turmoil of civil war.
Therefore, though he said no more, though he assumed an indifference which he was very far from feeling, he not only watched Mistress Julia, but with every nerve within him, with all the magnetism of his powerful personality, he willed her to accede to his wishes.
She, feeling this subtle influence in the same manner as in ages to come mediums were destined to feel the influence of hypnotic power, she gradually yielded to his unspoken desire—yielded to him whilst believing that she held the threads of her own destiny, and that the final decision only rested with her.
Then she rose and went to that same little bureau in the angle of the room, at which just an hour ago she had penned so laboriously the missive which had summoned Sir John Ayloffe hither. This time, as she sat down to it, she took from beneath her kerchief a small key which was fastened round her neck by a silk ribbon. With this she opened one of the drawers of the bureau, and after another moment of final hesitation she deliberately took a packet from the drawer.
The packet was tied up with green cord; this she untied with a hand that trembled somewhat with feverish excitement. Having selected a paper from among a number of others, she once more fastened the green cord, replaced the packet in the drawer, locked the latter and replaced the key in the folds of her gown.