"I want you to protect yourself and your family," she retorted crushingly. "The temptation to make a little more money, or a good deal more, ought not to lead you to risk your reputation. Look at the men that were disgraced by that last investigation."
"But they had done wrong."
"They don't think so, do they? How do you know what some of the things you've done will look like when they're blazoned in the newspapers?"
"I'm not afraid!" declaimed Trafford, fright in his eyes and in his noisy voice.
"No," said his wife soothingly. "Of course, you've done nothing wrong. You needn't tell me that. But it's just as bad to be misunderstood as to be guilty."
During the silence which fell he paced the floor like a man running away, and she gazed thoughtfully into the fire. When she spoke again it was with a subdued, nervous manner and as if she were telling him something which she wished him to think she did not understand. "One day I was driving in the East Side, looking after some of my poor. There was a block—in the Hester Street market. A crowd got around the carriage, and a man—a dreadful, dirty, crazy-eyed creature—called out, 'There's the wife of the blood-sucker Trafford, that swindles the poor on burial insurance!' And the crowd hissed and hooted at me, and shook their fists. And a woman spat into the carriage." Mrs. Trafford paused before going on: "I get a great many anonymous letters. I never have worried you about these things. You have your troubles, and I knew it was all false. But——"
Her voice ceased. For several minutes, oppressive and menacing silence brooded over that ostentatious room. Its costly comforts and costlier luxuries weighed upon the husband and wife, so far removed from the squalor of those whose earnings had been filched to create this pitiful, yet admired, flaunting of vanity. Finally he said, speaking almost under his breath, "What would you advise me to do?"
Although she had long had ready her answer to that inevitable question, she waited before replying. "Not to pull Atwater's chestnuts out of the fire for him," said she slowly. "Stop the attack. I've an instinct that evil will come of it—evil to us. Let Armstrong alone. If he's not managing his business right, what concern is it of yours? And if you try to get it, what if, instead of making money, you lose your reputation—maybe, more? What does Atwater risk? Nothing. What does Langdon risk? Nothing. What do you risk? Everything. That's not sensible, is it?"
"But I can't go back on Atwater," he objected in the tone that begs to be overruled. "Armstrong would attack me, anyhow, and I'd simply have both sides against me."
She turned upon him, amazed, terrified. "Do you mean to say you've got no hold on Atwater?" she exclaimed.