“He is not the sort of man to forget,” Barrington said, half to himself.
She shuddered ever so slightly. Then she stretched out a long white arm, and drawing his head suddenly down to her, kissed him on the lips.
“If only,” she murmured, “he would give up the letters! Without them, he might say—anything. No one would believe!”
Barrington raised his eyes to hers. There was something almost pathetic in the worshiping light which shone there. He was, as he had always been, her abject slave.
“Can you think of any way?” he asked. “Shall I go to him again?”
“Useless!” she answered. “You have nothing to offer in exchange. He would not give them to me. He surely would not give them to you. Shall I tell you what is in his mind? Listen, then! He is rich now; he means to make more money there. Then he will return, calling himself Mr. Wingrave—an American—with imaginary letters of introduction to us. He has ambitions—I don’t know what they are, but they seem to entail his holding some sort of a place in society. We are to be his sponsors.”
“Is it practicable?” he asked.
“Quite,” she answered. “He is absolutely unrecognizable now. He has changed cruelly. Can’t you imagine the horror of it? He will be always in evidence; always with those letters in the background. He means to make life a sort of torture chamber for us!”
“Better defy him at once, and get over,” Barrington said. “After all, don’t you think that the harm he could do is a little imaginary?”
She brushed the suggestion aside with a little shiver.