“Why did you send for me?” he asked bluntly.
“To ask for your advice—and to protect me,” she added, with a shiver. “It is not only money that Jean le Roi wants! It is vengeance because I betrayed him.”
“As for that, I won’t leave you except when you send me away,” he declared. “And my advice! If you want that, the right thing to me seems simple enough. Go at once to your lawyers. They will tell you the proper course. At the worst, the man could be bought off for the present.”
She raised her head.
“I will not give him one penny,” she declared. “I have always sworn that.”
“But I’m afraid if you won’t try to divorce him that he can claim some,” Macheson said.
“Then he must come and take it by force,” she declared.
There was silence between them. Then she rose to her feet and came and stood before him.
“I ought to have told you all this long ago,” she said simply. “To-day I felt that I must tell you without another hour’s delay. Now that you know, I am not so terrified. But you must promise to come and see me every day while that brute remains in London.”