“I think anyone who makes charges of this kind,” interrupted Christopher coldly, “is bound to bring forward something more definite than mere suspicion.”
Charlotte took her hand out of her pocket without the handkerchief, and laid it for a moment on Christopher’s arm.
“My dear Sir Christopher, I entirely agree with you,” she said in her most temperate, ladylike manner, “and I am prepared to place certain facts before you, on whose accuracy you may perfectly rely, although circumstances prevent my telling you how I learned them.”
The whole situation was infinitely repugnant to Christopher. He would himself have said that he had not nerve enough to deal with Miss Mullen; and joined with this, and his innate and overstrained dislike of having his affairs discussed, was the unendurable position of conniving with her at a treachery. Little as he liked Lambert, he sided with him now with something more than a man’s ordinary resentment against feminine espionage upon another man. He was quite aware of the subdued eagerness in Charlotte’s manner, and it mystified while it disgusted him; but he was also aware that nothing short of absolute flight would check her disclosures. He could do nothing now but permit himself the single pleasure of staring over her head with a countenance barren of response to her histrionic display of expression.
“You ask me for something more definite than mere suspicion,” continued Charlotte, approaching one of the supremest gratifications of her life with full and luxurious recognition. “I can give you two facts, and if, on investigation, you find they are not correct, you may go to Roderick Lambert, and tell him to take an action for libel against me! I daresay you know that a tenant of yours, named James M‘Donagh—commonly called Shamus Bawn—recently got the goodwill of Knocklara, and now holds it in addition to his father’s farm, which he came in for last month.” Christopher assented. “Jim M‘Donagh paid one hundred and eighty pounds fine on getting Knocklara. I ask you to examine your estate account, and you will see that the sum credited to you on that transaction is no more than seventy.”
“May I ask how you know this?” Christopher turned his face towards her for a moment as he asked the question, and encountered, with even more aversion than he had expected, her triumphing eyes.
“I’m not at liberty to tell you. All I say is, go to Jim M‘Donagh, and ask him the amount of his fine, and see if he won’t tell you just the same sum that I’m telling you now.”
Captain Cursiter, at this moment steering the Serpolette daintily among the shadows of Bruff Bay, saw the two incongruous figures on the turf quay, one short, black, and powerful, the other tall, white, and passive, and wondered, through the preoccupation of crawling to his anchorage, what it was that Miss Mullen was holding forth to Dysart about, in a voice that came to him across the water like the gruff barking of a dog. He thought, too, that there was an almost ship-wrecked welcome in the shout with which Christopher answered his whistle, and was therefore surprised to see him remain where he was, apparently enthralled by Miss Mullen’s conversation, instead of walking round to meet him at the boat-house pier.
Charlotte had, in fact, by this time, compelled Christopher to give her his whole attention. As he turned towards her again, he admitted to himself that the thing looked rather serious, though he determined, with the assistance of a good deal of antagonistic irritability, to keep his opinion to himself. This feeling was uppermost as he said: “I have never had the least reason to feel a want of confidence in Mr. Lambert, Miss Mullen, and I certainly could not discredit him by going privately to M‘Donagh to ask him about the fine.”
“It’s a pity all unfaithful stewards haven’t as confiding a master as you, Sir Christopher,” said Charlotte, with a laugh. She felt Christopher’s attitude towards her, as a man in armour may have felt the arrows strike him, and no more, and it came easily to her to laugh. “However,” she went on, correcting her manner quickly, as she saw a very slight increase of colour in Christopher’s face, “the burden of proof does not lie with James M‘Donagh. Last November, as you may possibly remember, my name made its first appearance on your rent-roll, as the tenant of Gurthnamuckla, and in recognition of that honour,”—Charlotte felt that there was an academic polish about her sentences that must appeal to a University man—“I wrote your agent a cheque for one hundred pounds, which was duly cashed some days afterwards.” She altered her position, so that she could see his face better, and said deliberately: “Not one penny of that has been credited to the estate! This I know for a fact.”