"I shall have to go to that dreadful woman's apartment, be alone with her, make a secret bargain," she enumerated the various parts of her task, wonder and repugnance mingling in her voice. "That horrible woman! You say, yourself, Mr. Hastings, she's horrible."
"Still," he repeated, "you can do it."
A little while ago she had cried out, both hands clenched on the arm of the rustic bench, her eyes opening wide in the startled look he had come to know: "If I could do something, anything, for Berne! Dr. Welles said only an hour ago he had no more than an even chance for his life. Half the time he can't speak! And I'm responsible. I am! I know it. I try to think I'm not. But I am!"
He recurred to that.
"Dr. Welles said the ending of Mr. Webster's suspense would be the best medicine for him. And I think Webster would see that nobody but you could do this—in the very nature of things. The absolute secrecy required, the fact that you buy her silence, pay her to cease her accusations against Berne—don't you see? He'd want you to do it."
That finished her resistance. She made him repeat all his directions, precautions for secrecy.
"I wish I could tell you how important it is," he said. "And keep this in mind always: I rely on your paying her the money without even a suspicion of it getting abroad. If accidents happen and you're seen entering the Walman, what more natural than that you want to ask this woman the meaning of her vague threats against—against Sloanehurst?—But of money, your real object, not a word! Nobody's to have a hint of it."
"Oh, yes; I see the necessity of that." But she was distressed. "Suppose she refuses?"
Her altered frame of mind, an eagerness now to succeed with the plan she had at first refused, brought him again his thought of yesterday: "If she were put to it—if she could save only one and had to choose between father and fiancé, her choice would be for the fiancé."