"Clara," she urged, "wait three days, and you shall have the whole of it. You have only the picture now. You shall have the jewel, too. Then you can get the reward and still be—honest."
She let the word fall into the silence fearfully, as if she were afraid Clara might detect its sneer. But this time Clara neither smiled nor frowned.
"It isn't the reward I'm thinking about. That's really very little, considering."
"Twenty thousand dollars!"
"Would that be much to you?"
"No," Flora admitted; "at least I mean I could pay it."
"Well, then," Clara triumphed, "why, the picture alone, if it's worth anything, is worth more than that." With a bird-like lifting of the head she gave a sidelong interrogative glance.
Flora, for a moment, steadily returned the look. It was coming over her what Clara meant; a meaning so simple it was absurd she had not thought of it before—so hateful that it was all she could do to face it. She felt a tightness in her throat that was not tears. Shame and anger contended in her. Oh, for the power to have refused that shameful bargain—to have scorned it! She turned away. She closed her eyes. In her mind she saw the figure of Kerr moving quietly about the winding walks with Mrs. Herrick. She faced sharply about. "What is it worth to you?"
Clara put her off with the last sweet meekness of her cleverness. "Whatever it's worth to you—and him."
Flora was in command of herself now. "There are some things I can not set a price on. If this is what you have come down for, we are simply waiting for you to name it." She looked over Clara's head. She had stood abashed when Clara had put on the majesty of right, but now it was Clara herself who was abashed, not at the thing itself, but at the fact of having to utter it. She sat grasping one of her gloves in her doubled fist; and, leaning forward, with her eyes like jewels in her little pale face and the white aura of her veil, waited as if she thought that by some silent agency of understanding Flora would presently take up a pen and write the desired figure in her check-book.