“But what is it to you? Why do you care? Why are you pale? Yes, I say it again, not honest! the miserable ruffian.”
“If he heard you, I think he might resent it with some vigor,” she said quietly.
“Why do you speak so strangely? What is it? Do you doubt what I tell you?” asked Van Hupfeldt.
“I neither doubt nor believe. What is it to me? I only feel ashamed to live in the same world with such people. If it was not to obtain my authorization to spend the one hundred pounds for the certificates, why did he come?”
“There were no certificates!” cried Van Hupfeldt, vehemently. “The certificates were an invention. What he really wanted was, not your authorization, but the one hundred itself. He hoped that when he asked for your authorization, you, in your eagerness to have the certificates, would produce the one hundred pounds, which to a man in his position is quite a large sum, whereupon he would have decamped, and you would have heard no more either of him or of your one hundred pounds. But, as you did not hand him the money, he now very naturally writes to say that he can’t get the certificates. I know the fellow very well. I have long known him. He comes from America, where he has played such ingenious pranks once too often.”
Violet sighed with misery, like one who hears the unfavorable verdict of a doctor. “Oh, don’t!” she murmured.
“I am sorry to offend your ears,” said Van Hupfeldt, looking with interest at his nails, for they had nearly dug into the palms of his hands a few minutes earlier, “but it was necessary to tell you this. This is not the sort of man who ought ever to have entered your presence. How, by the way, did you come to know him?”
“I met him by chance at my sister’s grave. He told me that he is the tenant of the flat. He seemed good. I don’t know what to do!” She let herself fall into a chair, leaned her head on her hand, and stared miserably into vacancy, while Van Hupfeldt, limping nearer, said over her:
“You ought to promise me, Violet, never again to allow yourself to hold any sort of communication with this person. You will hardly, indeed, be able to see him again, for Mrs. Mordaunt has just been telling me of her sudden resolve to go down to Rigsworth to-morrow morning.”