“No, unfortunately, it isn’t yours. I am familiar with these contracts. It was a settlement made in case of your surviving your husband. That’s what it was. I’m sure of it. Try to remember now, and be careful.”
She stiffened with all her being at these menacing words from these two dear lips, these set red lips. It was not a question any more now for her of making an accomplice of her lover, of getting this supreme gauge of love from him, only of saving that love. Her only weapons were the caresses in her voice, and she knew he would yield to them; and, besides, was it not the truth, what she was telling him?
“Maurice, don’t treat me like this. You deceive yourself. My dot belongs to me. It was mine from the beginning. A friend of my father’s insisted upon it. Do you want proof of it? As long as my mother lived I used the income from it for her. I could dispose of it as I saw fit. You see, you are mistaken. Don’t treat me like this.”
In his mental disarray the former law student of the Frasne offices was summoning up all his ideas of law, trying to reason the thing out.
“It’s always been a gift. A gift from him. And a settlement is revocable in case of divorce.”
“Not mine, I swear to you,” she assured him, hazarding everything on the throw.
“Try to think, Edith. It is so serious. My very life is at stake.”
“Your life?”
“Yes. Or my honour. It’s the same thing. Was it you who took charge of this sum, who handled the revenues?”
“Yes, I.”