"Let her rest, boy, let her rest," was all the answer he got.
There was a sort of grey look of horror about Haggard's face, that the boy put down to grief for the departed. He was a hard-hearted youth, and was frankly surprised that Haggard showed any feeling at all.
The husband and wife, as we have said, sat in Georgie's boudoir. This was what passed between them.
"Your cousin seems to have made a nice mess of it," said Haggard. "Why she was penniless."
"Well, that wouldn't much matter, Reginald; she could have written to Coutts' for more."
"Gad, they write me that she drew out the last farthing she had in the world two months ago. And that woman Fanchette, who is a very bad lot indeed, or I'm very much, mistaken, told me she pawned her earrings the day before she—died."
Georgie nodded. "I remember them, a pair of large single-stone earrings. I fancy she must have bought them when she first came into her property. I saw them quite by chance last summer, for the first time; and when I admired them, she said that she had had them for years, that they had been her first folly and had cost her dear."
"Well, here they are at any rate," said Haggard; "she pawned them for seven thousand francs, and I redeemed them after a lot of bother. And that's all that remains. She had spent or gambled away every farthing of the rest. I don't know whether I ought to tell you, Georgie," he continued in a softer tone.
"Tell me, Reginald, tell me what? Did you know?" and the light of love came back into Georgie Haggard's eyes, as she thought that perhaps her careless heartless husband had, from a wish to shield her cousin's honour, silently and deliberately allowed poor Lucy's bastard child to be fathered upon him. But the light quickly faded, and the eyes were suffused with tears, as her husband answered coarsely:
"Did I know what? I know this—she poisoned herself, there's not a doubt of that."