‘I will say what presents itself to me, and not what presents itself to you.’
‘Say it then. As to the inclination. Quick! Come to the inclination, and I know what to do.’
She was no quicker, and no slower, in her reply. ‘It would seem that you have obtained possession of a paper—or of papers—which I assuredly have the inclination to recover.’
Rigaud, with a loud laugh, drummed his heels against the table, and chinked his money. ‘I think so! I believe you there!’
‘The paper might be worth, to me, a sum of money. I cannot say how much, or how little.’
‘What the Devil!’ he asked savagely. ‘Not after a week’s grace to consider?’
‘No! I will not out of my scanty means—for I tell you again, we are poor here, and not rich—I will not offer any price for a power that I do not know the worst and the fullest extent of. This is the third time of your hinting and threatening. You must speak explicitly, or you may go where you will, and do what you will. It is better to be torn to pieces at a spring, than to be a mouse at the caprice of such a cat.’
He looked at her so hard with those eyes too near together that the sinister sight of each, crossing that of the other, seemed to make the bridge of his hooked nose crooked. After a long survey, he said, with the further setting off of his internal smile:
‘You are a bold woman!’
‘I am a resolved woman.’