He fell back into his arm-chair with a certain air of defiance and lit another cigar, as if by this time he were thoroughly determined to brazen the whole thing out, and to justify himself to himself, even if it were impossible to find a justification for any other. His cigar slipped from his nerveless fingers; as he reseated himself he stooped to pick it up, and, looking at it with a critical eye, began to smoke again. I verily believe that if any stranger had been present, I might have been supposed to be the more disturbed and self-conscious of the two. Perhaps I was, for throughout the whole of this singular interview I was haunted by a wondering inquiry as to what I should do with the man when I had completely exposed his infamy. I dare say I was a fool from the first to feel so, though I could not help it; but to surrender him to the vengeance he had invited seemed altogether an impossibility. In that respect at least he had me at a disadvantage, and I cannot help thinking that he knew it.
“The Baroness Bonnar!” I echoed. He made no answer, but leaned back in my arm-chair, smoking with an outside tranquillity, as if the whole affair were no business of his. “The Baroness Bonnar!” I repeated, and he gave a brief nod in affirmation. “And what,” I asked, “does she propose to pay you for this unspeakable rascality?”
A decanter and a water-jug stood upon the table, and he helped himself, holding up his tumbler against the light to judge of the amount of spirit he had taken before adding the water he needed. When his shaking hand jerked the jug and he had taken more water than he thought necessary, he sipped critically at the contents of the tumbler and added a little more spirit. Then he sipped again, and settled himself back into his chair, as if resigned to boredom. I knew I had only to speak a word to put all these airs to flight, but I hesitated to speak it.
“What does she pay you?” I asked again, and he turned upon me with a wretched attempt at a smile and a wave of the hand in which he held his cigar.
“It isn't usual to discuss these things,” he answered.
“You wish me to understand,” I said, “that for the sake of an amour with a woman of her age you have broken the most sacred oath a man could take, and have betrayed to life-long misery an old man who trusted you, and who never did you any harm. You have confessed yourself contemptible already, but surely you have a better excuse for your own villainy than this?” He was still silent, and smoked on with the same effort after an outward seeming of tranquillity, though his white face and shaking hand belied him. “What did you get in money?”
“Look here, Fyffe,” he answered, inspecting the ash of his cigar with the aspect of a connoisseur, and evading my glance, “your position gives you an advantage, but you are trying to make too much use of it. I had the most perfect assurances that the old man would be treated kindly, and I know that nobody has any intention to do anything but keep him out of mischief.”
I am very much ashamed of it now, and I think I was even a little conscious of shame about it then, but I felt inclined to comprehend the man, to fathom his depths of self-excuse, and I bore with his evasions and his explanations in a spirit of savage banter.
“Come,” I said, “we shall get to understand each other before we part. What were you paid?”
“In money?” he asked, flicking the ash from his cigar and settling himself with ostentatious pretence of ease. “In money—nothing.”