"You said you would advance me money—I knew you could write another cheque for the servants' wages. I—I didn't think of your minding."
"Mind!" said Cedric again, with reiteration worthy of his nursery days. "My dear girl, you don't suppose it's the money I mind, do you?"
"No, no—I ought to have asked you first—but I didn't think—it seemed a natural thing to do—"
"Good Lord, Alex!" cried Cedric, more moved than she had ever seen him. "Do you understand what you're saying? A natural thing to do to embezzle money?"
Tears of terror and of utter bewilderment seized on Alex' enfeebled powers, and deprived her of utterance.
Cedric began to pace the library, speaking rapidly and without looking at her.
"If you'd only written and told me what you'd done at once—though Heaven knows that would have been bad enough but to do a thing like that and then let it rest! Didn't you know that it must be found out sooner or later?"
He cast a fleeting glance at Alex, who sat with the tears pouring down her quivering face, but she said nothing. It was of no use to explain to Cedric that she had never thought of not being found out. She had meant no concealment. She had thought her action so simple a one that it had hardly needed explanation or justification. It had merely been not worth while to write.
Cedric's voice went on, gradually gaining in power as the agitation that had shaken him subsided under his own fluency.
"You know that it's a prosecutable offence, Alex? Of course, there's no question of such a thing, but to trade on that certainty—"