Ernest sank into a chair, and said nothing; but he turned so deadly pale that Mr. Wilks was fain to have recourse to a little brown flask he kept stowed away in a corner of his desk, and to administer a prompt dose of brandy and water.
‘There, there,’ he said, in the kindest manner of which he was capable, ‘what are you going to do now? You can’t be going out again in this state and in this weather, can you?’
‘Yes, I am,’ Ernest answered feebly. ‘I’m going to walk home at once to Holloway.’
‘To Holloway!’ the sub-editor said in a tone of comparative horror. ‘Oh! no, I can’t allow that. Wait here an hour or two till the workmen’s trains begin running. Or, stay; Lancaster left his brougham here for me to-night, as I have to be off early to-morrow on business; I’ll send you home in that, and let Hawkins get me a cab from the mews by order.’
Ernest made no resistance; and so the sub-editor sent him home at once in Lancaster’s brougham.
When he got home in the early grey of morning, he found Edie still sitting up for him in her chair, and wondering what could be detaining him so long at the newspaper office. He threw himself wildly at her feet, and, in such broken sentences as he was able to command, he told her all the pitiful story. Edie soothed him and kissed him as he went along, but never said a word for good or evil till he had finished.
‘It was a terrible temptation, darling,’ she said softly: ‘a terrible temptation, indeed, and I don’t wonder you gave way to it; but we mustn’t touch the three guineas. As you say rightly, it’s blood-money.’
Ernest drew the cheque slowly from his pocket, and held it hesitatingly a moment in his hand. Edie looked at him curiously.
‘What are you going to do with it, darling?’ she asked in a low voice, as he gazed vacantly at the last dying embers in the little smouldering fireplace.
‘Nothing, Edie dearest,’ Ernest answered huskily, folding it up and putting it away in the drawer by the window. They neither of them dared to look the other in the face, but they had not the heart to burn it boldly. It was blood-money, to be sure; but three guineas are really so very useful!