“Oh, I am sure not so bad as that,” said she wistfully. “It is a shame to talk that way of him. Why, George, as a boy he was better than you.”
“Where is your husband?” asked Benson, knowing well enough that he was dead, for he had opened all the letters that had come in her handwriting.
“Dead.”
“Oh, then, it was not all honey after you married him, was it?”
“He was good to me, and I believe that you made my father turn from me, and I will go straight to him and tell him that you have kept us apart.”
The pawnbroker came up at this moment.
“Miss, if you have any crying to do, please go out, for I don’t want you in here,” and, saying this, he gave poor Annie Standish a shove and sent her into the street.
“Such people set me crazy,” stormed the old man, “as if my shop was to be a fountain. I hate them all, that’s what I do.”
“That woman makes me feel as if I had nothing to live for,” gasped Benson. “Just you let Tom Cooper see her, and I’ll bet you that my cake will be dough in five minutes, but give me the money.”
“Are you sure that your uncle told you that you could have these diamonds when he was no more? Now, if they should make a search for them and claim that they were stolen, then I would have no chance but to give them up. Now then, out with the truth.”