"As you please," he repeated. "Only I'm afraid it's not a story likely, when told, to enlarge your local visiting-list."
Challoner perched on the back of the sofa again, domineering, masterful, leaning down and looking her straight in the eyes.
"See here, Gwynnie," he said. "You're in a tight place. Listen to reason. Don't be a fool and throw away your last chance in a pet."
"I mean to expose you. I will tell everybody, everybody," she cried.
"No," Challoner said, "you won't. I give you credit for more worldly wisdom, more self-respect, more good feeling, than that. The injury you might do me, by publishing this little love-passage of ours, would not be a patch upon the injury you would do yourself. You don't want to commit social suicide, do you, and find every door shut in your face? Tell any of these friends of yours, the Woodfords, Mrs. Paull, Marion Chase, and they'd avoid you as they would a leper, drop you like a hot potato, cut you dead, whether they believed your charming little tale or not. You are fond of company, Mrs. Gwynnie—a gregarious being. You would not the least enjoy being left out in the cold all by yourself. And there is another point. I am perfectly willing to pay for my pleasure honestly, as a man should, but it is not wise to tax my good nature too far. Doing your best to blast my reputation is not exactly the way to make me feel kindly or act generously toward you. There would be no more nice houses, rent free, Mrs. Gwyn, rates and taxes paid; no more quarterly allowance, I am afraid. I should cut off supplies, my dear. Your widow's pension is paid in rupees, remember, not in sterling; and the value of the rupee is hardly likely to go up. So you had better look at the question all round before you take the neighborhood into your confidence. Listen here, I will give you a hundred a year and the Marychurch house—"
"But if I tell everybody how you have treated me, public opinion will force you to marry me," she cried, with an air of announcing an annihilating truth.
Challoner swung his big body from side to side contemptuously.
"Faugh!" he said. "Public opinion will do nothing of the sort. You forget it is a case of my word against yours, and that, considering our relative positions, my word will count a jolly sight most."
"But you dare not deny—"
"Oh, indeed yes, I dare," Challoner broke out. "I can deny and shall deny—or rather should, for it won't ever come to the test—that your accusations have any foundation whatsoever in fact. If a woman is mad enough to incriminate herself she must do so. But a man always denies, at least every man of honor and proper feeling does. No, no; be sensible. Think of Beattie. Think of yourself. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. You are a taking woman still, Mrs. Gwyn. Give yourself another chance. For remember, you haven't a shred of evidence to offer in support of your attack. You have bombarded me with notes, but, except as lawyer to client, I have never written you two lines in my life." He paused. "No, thank goodness! even at my hottest I kept my head screwed on sufficiently the right way to avoid the old letter-writing trap."