"What do you think Sir Geoffrey's answer was?" he asked.
"What?"
"He gave me ten pounds as an act of charity, and said if you needed any more you could apply to the people you'd been living with all those years. So you see, if you had been starving, you need not have looked for much help from him."
A flush shot over her neck and cheeks and ebbed again.
"It only makes it worse that your villainy provoked such a message—such a gratuitous affront. Oh, what an incredible fool I have been! But I am beginning to see you in your true colours now."
Melville looked at her, shading his eyes with his hand; it might not be so easy to silence her after all.
"What are you going to do?"
"How can I say?" she protested. "I must have time. I can't even think yet."
"You must think," he retorted curtly. "You must make up your mind between this and Waterloo, and stick to it afterwards."
"I can't," she repeated. "What's more, I won't try." Her thoughts flashed back from themselves to the dead man. "Why did you do it?" she sobbed. "Why, in the name of heaven, did you do it?"