"Gerald, how can you speak so foolishly when you know how it is with you! Didn't you beg of me——"
"Oh, damn it, do leave me alone. Preach, preach, preach, from morning till night. After all you're not such a purified saint as all that yourself. You forget you sang in the chorus at a music-hall once!"
"I did, and you knew it, and why I had to do it, before you married me."
"Perhaps I did; but there are some things you took precious good care I should not know—Jabez, for instance! Who is he?"
She did not flinch, although she was hurt to the quick. She looked into the fire, with her head resting on her hand.
"Jabez is a man with whom you can have nothing to do. He passed out of my life two years ago. I have never seen him since."
"He was evidently very much in it once. Oh, Julia told me all about your little goings on—how you met him on the quiet, and gave him money, and worse even than that!"
"Gerald, what do you mean?"
"Why, what I say. According to Mrs. Darrow, you primed this chap to steal Uncle Barton's will."
"And you believe that?"