The question sprang sharply from his lips, insisting on an immediate reply.
"The storm was so awful—so appalling," she said faintly. "It was like the end of the world."
It was obvious to Melville that she was frightened of him, and he was content that it should be so, for only by terrorising her could he hope to maintain his ascendency over her; any woman might be nervous at being shut up in a railway carriage with a murderer, but it was not of that precisely that she was afraid, for she stood in no fear of violence at his hands. There was something despotic about him that compelled obedience, and even if she had not been naturally as truthful as she was she would not have attempted to prevaricate.
"Now tell me," Melville rapped out in the same peremptory way, "did you hear what we were saying in that room?"
"Some of it," she replied; "enough, at any rate, to know what you have been doing to get money."
"You don't know what my position was," Melville said. "You remember my leaving Monte Carlo—ruined?" Lavender nodded. "I went down to see my uncle a few days after I got home and he refused to help me. I don't know why. He had always been lavish to my brother, and had never refused me anything before. I was in absolute need of shillings, and had to get them somehow. After I heard of your marriage with him, I told him I knew and got something from him."
"But you got it on the ground that I was in need of it," she said indignantly.
"It was the only way I could get it at all," he retorted.
"It was an outrage," she said, with suppressed passion. "I resent that as much as anything else. After all the years I never touched a penny of his money for you to tell him I was starving and pocket the money for yourself is a thing you can't expect me not to be mad about."
Her eyes blazed from her white face, and Melville grew apprehensive.