"Mr. Betts! What is the meaning of this?" she asked, and her manner was not without a touch of pride.
"It is yours, ma'am, yours, all of it," he faltered.
"I do not understand," she said.
"It was yours, ma'am, and I—God forgive me!—I stole it from you."
"Mr. Betts!"
Then brokenly, incoherently, and with much shame and confusion, Michael made his confession.
Mrs. Lavers listened in bewilderment at first; but gradually light dawned on her mind.
"Oh, Mr. Betts!" she exclaimed, "If only I had known this before, it would have saved me so much trouble. We have wondered so what could have become of that fifty pounds. Some weeks after my husband's death, a gentleman called on me and stated that some time previously he had given Professor Lavers fifty pounds as a subscription to a scientific society in which my husband was interested. He had made inquiries of the treasurer of the society, and had learned that the money had never been paid in. You may fancy how worried I was when I heard that. I searched amongst my husband's papers, and could find no entry of the money. Yet, of course, I could not doubt the gentleman's word. Since it was impossible to trace the money, and I could not imagine what my husband had done with it, I had to make the amount good at considerable sacrifice. But now I see perfectly what he did. That book must have been lying on his table at the time, and he just slipped the notes inside its leaves, meaning to remove them afterwards, and then forgot all about them. It was just like him. He was so absent-minded, my poor husband."
"And I, in keeping them, acted like a common thief," said Michael gloomily. "You had better send for a policeman, ma'am, and give me in charge."
"No, no," said the lady, with a melancholy smile, "I will not do that. You did not think what you were doing; you did not know the trouble you were causing me. But oh! It made such a difference to me having to find those fifty pounds in my poverty and widowhood. But for that, I might have afforded to settle in a nicer neighbourhood, and then, perhaps, my child would never have taken this terrible disease."