“And with the key and all? By why here? Why not in the old place?”
“What a cur you are, Tizzy. Don’t you understand? Because she’s polluted it for me. If you want me back you must find me another place than that. You might have got through that little time of separation, I think, without filling it in with a fresh fancy.”
“Ah, there! You were the most unreasonably jealous, my darling.”
“Was I? You are lying, you know. What a d——d fool you must take me for. Well, just assure me, please, that your answer to my wire was God’s truth. You have got rid of her?”
“Yes, on my honour, Jennett, she is gone.”
“That’s well for you.”
“It is? You don’t mean to tell me you would really have gone those lengths in revenge?”
“Wouldn’t I? And further.”
“After all that I’d trusted to you?”
“What did I trust to you? I played my part faithfully, didn’t I—did the housemaid proper; goosed the poor postman—his face is before me now, with its sick, gone look, as I palmed the receipt that I pretended to put with a kiss into his pouch. Why Valkenburg made proposals to me, too, and handsome ones. I never told you that. But he did; and I was true to you; and all the time you were filling my place with that Barnes devil. I wonder I didn’t murder you both; but luckily I had a safer and a surer means to pay you out—the dummy parcel itself, which I hadn’t destroyed as you wanted me to, but had kept and hidden against accidents. You know that now, don’t you, and are willing to do anything to save your beastly skin?”