“She could be approached in another way,” he said with a suggestion of pondering deliberation.
“What way?”
“You say she married Dominick for money. Have you never thought of buying her off?”
He looked at Mrs. Ryan and met her eyes staring anxiously and, in a sort of way, shyly into his.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice, “I have.”
“Have you tried it?”
“No,—I—I—I don’t think I dared,” she said almost desperately. “It was my last trump.”
He realized, and, though he was unmoved by it, felt the pathos of this admission from the proud and combative woman who had so long and so successfully domineered over her world.
“I suppose it is a sort of death-bed remedy,” he said, “but it seems to me it’s about time to try it. Your idea that she’s going to wait till you die and then claim part of the estate as Dominick’s wife is all very well, but she’s not the kind of woman to be willing to wait patiently through the rolling years on three thousand dollars per annum. She’s a good bit older than he is and it isn’t making her any happier to see her best days passing with nothing doing. I should think you stood a pretty good chance of getting her to listen to reason.”
“Offering her a sum down to leave him?” she said, looking at the fire, her brows knit.