“I can—I? O, God! if I might!”
“I say you may. There, throw down your silly weapon. Our principles confirmed, your fool’s life counts with us for little. I’ll give you proof. I’ve already put it into the hands of her up there to deal with it as she will.”
“Her? His life?”
“His life.”
“You put it?”
“I.”
“She hates him.”
“Maybe. But she keeps a conscience.”
“What have—?”
“Why, can’t you understand that, the man convicted of the crime and hanged for it, my draughts on her would be dishonoured—she were a bank stopped payment. Fine reason, to be sure, for my seeking his destruction. I calculated better—I calculated on her conscience, I say—a perverse organ in a woman; but it stuck at his death, just that. It served me to commute my pension, so to speak—to exchange her the means to save him, once condemned, against a little bond—a promissory note—it’s here.”