“That the box I brought over contained the proceeds of the bank robbery—money that you had hidden away.”
Millicent Hallam started up and gazed about her with a dazed look, as if she were startled by the words she heard—words that seemed to have come from other lips than hers; and then she pressed her hands to her heaving bosom as her husband spoke.
“Stephen Crellock must be getting tired of his leave,” he said coolly. “An idiot! He had better have kept his tongue between his teeth. How came he to be chattering about that? If he don’t mind—” He did not finish the sentence, and his wife’s eyes dilated as she gazed at him in a horrified way.
“You do not deny it!” she said at last. “You do not declare that this is all cruelly false!”
“No,” he said slowly, “I am not going to worry myself about his words. He can’t prove anything.”
“But it is a charge against your honour,” she cried; “against me. Robert! you will not let this go uncontradicted for an hour longer?”
“Stephen Crellock had better mind,” said Hallam, slowly and thoughtfully, as if he had not heard his wife.
“But, Robert—my husband! you will speak for your own sake—for your child’s sake—for mine?”
There was a growing intensity in the words, whose tones rose to one of passionate appeal.
He made an impatient motion that implied a negative, and she threw herself once more upon her knees at his feet.