"Well, I've invested it—and lost it."
"James Gordon Sanford!" she exclaimed, trying to realize it. "Was that right? Ain't that a case of—of—"
"Shouldn't wonder. A case of embezzlement such as you read of in the newspapers." His tone was easy, but he avoided the look in his wife's beautiful gray eyes.
"But it's—stealing—ain't it?" She stared at him, bewildered by his reckless lightness of mood.
"It is now, because I've lost. If I'd 'a' won it, it 'ud 'a' been financial shrewdness!"
She asked her next question after a pause, in a low voice, and through teeth almost set. "Did you go into this bank to—steal this money? Tell me that!"
"No; I didn't, Nell. I ain't quite up to that."
His answer softened her a little, and she sat looking at him steadily as he went on. The tears began to roll slowly down her cheeks. Her hands were clenched.
"The fact is, the idea came into my head last fall when I went up to Superior. My partner wanted me to go in with him on some land, and I did. We speculated on the growth of the town toward the south. We made a strike; then he wanted me to go in on a copper-mine. Of course I expected—"
As he went on with the usual excuses her mind made all the allowances possible for him. He had always been boyish, impulsive, and lacking in judgment and strength of character. She was humiliated and frightened, but she loved and sympathized with him.