‘Why, it’s all your doing, I suppose,’ the other pursued, in the same voice. ‘What right had you to let him go off in that way without saying a word to us? If the truth was known, I expect you were at the bottom of it; he wouldn’t have been such a fool, whatever he says. What right had you, I’d like to know?’
Adela calmed herself as she listened. Her surprise at the attack was modified and turned into another channel by Alice’s words.
‘Has Richard told you what passed between us?’ she inquired. It cost her nothing to speak with unmoved utterance; the difficulty was not to seem too indifferent.
‘He’s told us as much as he thought fit. His duty! I like that! As if you couldn’t have stopped him, if you’d chosen! You might have thought of other people.’
‘Did he tell you that I tried to stop him?’ Adela asked, with the same quietness of interrogation.
‘Why, did you?’ cried Alice, looking up scornfully.
‘No.’
‘Of course not! Talk about duty! I should think that was plain enough duty. I only wish he’d come to me with his talk about duty. It’s a duty to rob people, I suppose? Oh, I understand him well enough. It’s an easy way of getting out of his difficulties; as well lose his money this way as any other. He always thinks of himself first, trust him! He’ll go down to New Wanley and make a speech, no doubt, and show off—with his duty and all the rest of it! What’s going to become of me? You’d no right to let him go before telling us.’
‘You would have advised him to say nothing about the will?’
‘Advised him!’ she laughed angrily. ‘I’d have seen if I couldn’t do something more than advise.’