“Well suggested, Georgie—I really beg your pardon. But we are quite remote here. That’s why I ventured to suggest the place for a rendezvous, after your husband, on the afternoon I called here, had shown me over his estate. A very pretty legend, and a very pretty setting for it—the ‘Baby’s Garden’! and very aptly named for our interview.”
She fell back a little, holding her hand to her forehead terribly; seeming to speak to herself.
“After all, it is only your word against mine.”
“Well, not quite,” he said—“not quite. Aren’t you forgetting Mother Carey?”
She stared at him, gulping once or twice.
“I never lose sight,” he said, “of possible witnesses to my interests. It’s not been to those to lay that dear old ghost of our past, though you would seem to have thought it to yours. A bad policy, child. Do you even know if she is living or dead? You should, if you were wise. But I can see you don’t. An undutiful daughter, to be sure. But she’s living, Georgie—I don’t even mind telling you where. She’s living down in Lambeth—in Old Paradise Street, bless her appropriate quarters—and always ready to testify, at her reasonable price. She’s degenerated into something of a miser, too, I understand, and hoards her ill-gotten gains. How do I know? Why, through some lawyers, my dear, friends of mine, who happen to pay her one of her little quarterly stipends of hush-money. (You, I believe, compromised with her for a lump sum—again a poor policy.) O, you may take my word for it! and do what you like with the information. Lady Skene, I think, will hardly rush to establish her claim to that connection. And, even if she did, I’ve means of controlling Mother Carey. What if I say three hundred pounds?”
“You shall have it.”
“So I supposed. Then we’ll say five hundred.”
“Ruin me, if you will.”
“Hush, my dear! What an inference! To esteem me capable of such a blind villainy! You’re still a very beautiful woman, Georgie.”