Meanwhile Lady Harman produced a little glittering object and held it between finger and thumb. “If I went into a pawnshop near here,” she said, “it would seem so odd.... This ring, Susan, must be worth thirty or forty pounds. And it seems so silly when I have it that I should really be wanting money....”
Susan displayed a peculiar reluctance to handle the ring. “I’ve never,” she said, “pawned anything valuable—not valuable like that. Suppose—suppose they wanted to know how I had come by it.”
“It’s more than Alice earns in a year,” she said. “It’s——” she eyed the glittering treasure; “it’s a queer thing for me to have.”
A certain embarrassment arose between them. Lady Harman’s need of money became more apparent. “I’ll do it for you,” said Susan, “indeed I’ll do it. But——There’s one thing——”
Her face flushed hotly. “It isn’t that I want to make difficulties. But people in our position—we aren’t like people in your position. It’s awkward sometimes to explain things. You’ve got a good character, but people don’t know it. You can’t be too careful. It isn’t sufficient—just to be honest. If I take that——If you were just to give me a little note—in your handwriting—on your paper—just asking me——I don’t suppose I need show it to anyone....”
“I’ll write the note,” said Lady Harman. A new set of uncomfortable ideas was dawning upon her. “But Susan——You don’t mean that anyone, anyone who’s really honest—might get into trouble?”
“You can’t be too careful,” said Susan, manifestly resolved not to give our highly civilized state half a chance with her.
§6
The problem of Sir Isaac and just what he was doing and what he thought he was doing and what he meant to do increased in importance in Lady Harman’s mind as the days passed by. He had an air of being malignantly up to something and she could not imagine what this something could be. He spoke to her very little but he looked at her a great deal. He had more and more of the quality of a premeditated imminent explosion....
One morning she was standing quite still in the drawing-room thinking over this now almost oppressive problem of why the situation did not develop further with him, when she became aware of a thin flat unusual book upon the small side table near the great armchair at the side of the fire. He had been reading that overnight and it lay obliquely—it might almost have been left out for her.