"Fifty fiddlesticks! It was five hundred!"
"My heavens! Enough to pay off the mortgage. But you couldn't possibly accept it?"
"I said no. I swore that I'd done nothing to earn a cent: that wild horses wouldn't drag from me anything I'd seen, or heard, or even imagined, in his house. But Mr. Sands insisted. 'It will give me pleasure for you to have the money. It's little enough,' he said. Then he walked right out. He must have gone back to his own room instead of leaving the flat just then, for I saw him again later. I'll tell you about that. But do you think it was wrong to keep the money?"
"In the circumstances, no," Mrs. Blackburne decided. "It would have hurt his feelings to give it back. Oh, my dear, five hundred dollars! It's like a fairy gift, just when we're needing it so much!"
"Well, I'd got the bills tucked away when Mrs. Sands came running in. She made for the table, the way a pointer goes for a shot bird. She hadn't a glance for the velvet case. She was searching for something else. Oh, Mother, it scared me to see her! She threw everything about. She was out of her head. A tall vase of flowers tipped over, and splashed water on the books, and even on the velvet case. I don't think she knew it had happened. Books fell on the floor. She didn't see or care. Then she sank all of a heap into a big chair close by. 'The envelope?' she gasped, as if she were choked by a hand on her throat. 'It was there. Where is it now?'
"I told her I hadn't seen any envelope, which was perfectly true. She described it: quite a big, long envelope, made of linen, and sealed up with several red seals. I swore over again I hadn't seen an envelope of any description. At last she had to believe me. But the worst was to come. 'Did you leave the room, for so much as a second, after I left you?' she asked, with her eyes on my face. I told her I hadn't stirred outside the door; but what I was scared of came next: 'Did any one come in?'"
"Oh, lovey, I hope you didn't have to tell a falsehood?"
"That depends on what you call a falsehood," said Miss Blackburne. "I hate fibs as much as you do. But it was an awful fix!"
"It was," Mums agreed.
"You see," Ellen went on, to make her position clear, "I had asked Mr. Sands not to let his wife know I'd called him in. Later, he pressed that money on me, and I accepted it. I felt as if it had bought me, body and soul. When he stood by the table, he must have seen that envelope, and taken it. Well, now, I ask you, could I give him away?"