I rose and took up my hat. She stretched out her hand, as if to lay hold of me, with a cry.
“Stop, stop. I’ll tell you all about it. I lost it again. That’s the worst of it. I got no good of it.”
“What was it?”
“A sovereign,” she said, with a groan. “And now I’m a thief, I suppose.”
“No more a thief than you were before. Rather less, I hope. But do you think it would have been any better for you if you hadn’t lost it, and had got some good of it, as you say?”
She was silent yet again.
“If you hadn’t lost it you would most likely have been a great deal worse for it than you are—a more wicked woman altogether.”
“I’m not a wicked woman.”
“It is wicked to steal, is it not?”
“I didn’t steal it.”