“You may be able to forgive me, Mr. Rotherfield, but it’s too late to ask me to forgive you.”
For a moment he was confounded, but he quickly recovered himself.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Must I say it? Remember, I shall have a good deal to say,” said she, below her breath.
He cast at her a look which frightened her, so full of undisguised malice was it.
“Say it and let us have it out,” he said defiantly.
“Well, you stole the picture; you were taking it up to town—to sell. And it was you, no doubt, who robbed Sir Robert of his snuff-boxes also. There is no injustice in taking that for granted.”
“Indeed! Now I should have thought there was the cruellest injustice in accusing any man of a theft which you couldn’t prove up to the hilt.”
“Very well. We will leave out the matter of the snuff-boxes then. You can’t deny that you stole the picture.”
“I do deny it. If I had a hand in it, you know for whom it was done. You know whose extravagance has to be paid for, somehow or other; and that a man, placed in such a position as I, is forced to choose between betraying one of his friends or the other. I stood by the woman. What else could I do?”