Mrs. Brace thought again.
"How much?" she asked at last, her lips thickening. "How much, Miss Sloane, do you think my silence is worth?"
Lucille took a roll of bills from her handbag. The woman's chair slid forward, answering to the forward—leaning weight of her new posture. She was lightly rubbing her palms together, as, with head a little bowed, she stared at the money in the younger woman's hand.
"I have here five hundred dollars," Lucille began.
"What!"
Mrs. Brace said that roughly; and, in violent anger, drew back, the legs of her chair grating on the floor.
For a moment Lucille gazed at her, uncomprehending.
"Oh!" she said, uncertainly. "You mean—it isn't enough?"
"Enough!" Mrs. Brace's rage and disappointment grew, her lowered brows a straight line close down to her eyes.
"But I could get more!" Lucille exclaimed, struggling with disgust. "This," she added, with ready invention, "can serve as a part payment, a promise of——"