"I am not likely to go near him," Beatrice said coldly; "but tell me, why did you come here? It is not possible that I can help you in any way!"
"Oh, yes it is," Richford said, with a certain good humour that caused Beatrice to turn suspicious at once. "You can do a great deal for me if you only will. I am going to leave you a desolate and disconsolate widow. A grass widow, if you like; but you will have your freedom. I am going to leave my country for my country's good; I shall never come back again. But the crash has come at a time when I least expected it, which is a habit that crashes have. I had barely time to procure this disguise before the wolves were after me. They are hot on my track now, and I have no time to spare. What I come for is money."
"Money! Surely you made a sorry mistake then!"
"Oh, no; I'm not asking for cash, seeing that you have practically none of your own. As you refuse to consider yourself my wife, in future you must also decline to take anything from me. Therefore those diamonds are not your property. If you will hand them over to me, we will shake hands and part for ever."
Beatrice drew a long deep breath of something like relief. It was good to know that this man was going to rid her of his hateful presence for ever, but this was too big a price to pay for her freedom.
"Let us quite understand one another," she said. "Your business is ruined; there is nothing left. What about your creditors, the people who trusted you?"
"Burn and blister my creditors," Richford burst out furiously. "What do they matter? Of course the fools who trusted me with their money will cry out. But they only trusted it with me, because they thought that I was slaving and scheming to pay them big dividends. It will not be the welfare of my creditors that keeps me awake at night."
"Always cold and callous and indifferent to the feelings of others," Beatrice said. "Not even one single thought for the poor people that you have ruined. What are those diamonds worth?"
"Well, I gave £40,000 for them. I dare say I can get, say £30,000 for them. But we are wasting time in idle discourse like this."
"Indeed, we are," Beatrice said coldly. "So you think that in the face of what you have just told me, I am going to hand those stones over to you! Nothing of the kind. I shall keep them in trust for your creditors. When the right time comes I shall hand them