"Inquiries? Inquiries enough have been made, you may depend upon it, before this got into the papers. Why, read! The fellow has bolted; the police are after him; he has robbed and swindled right and left. Do you imagine your money has escaped his clutches?"
They stood face to face.
"Dear, don't be angry with me!" sounded from Iris in a choking voice. "I am not to blame—I couldn't help it—oh don't look at me like that, dear husband!"
"But you have been outrageously careless! What right had you to expose us to this danger? Ass that I was ass, ass that I was! I wanted to speak of it, and my cursed delicacy prevented me. What right had you to behave so idiotically?"
He set off at a great speed towards Dawlish. Iris ran after him, caught his arm, clung to him.
"Where are you going? You won't leave me?"
"I'm going to London, of course," was his only reply, as he strode on.
Running by his side, Iris told with broken breath of the offer of marriage she had received from Wrybolt not long ago. She understood now why he wished to marry her; no doubt he already found himself in grave difficulties, and saw this as a chance either of obtaining money, or of concealing a fraud he had already practised at her expense.
"Why didn't you tell me that before?" cried Lashmar, savagely. "What right had you to keep it from me?"
"I ought to have told you. Oh, do forgive me! Don't walk so quickly, Dyce! I haven't the strength to keep up with you.—You know that he hadn't everything—most fortunately not everything—"