Monkey Brand looked again at her. His wife had loved her. Across the material, merciless face of the money-lender a flicker passed of some other feeling besides the business of the moment; as if, almost as if he would not have been averse to help her if she would deal straightforwardly with him.
"You were my wife's friend," he said after a moment's pause. "She often spoke of you with affection. I also regarded you with high esteem. A few days before you came to stay with us I was looking over my papers one evening, and I mentioned that your brother's I O U would fall due almost immediately. She said she believed it would ruin him if I called in the money then. I said I should do so, for I had waited once already against my known rules of business. I never wait. I should not be in the position which I occupy to-day if I had ever waited. She said, 'Wait at least till after Janet's wedding. It might tell against her if her brother went smash just before.' I replied that I should foreclose, wedding or none. She came across to me, and, by a sudden movement, took the I O U out of my hand before I could stop her. 'I won't have Janet distressed,' she said. 'I shall keep it myself till after the wedding,' and she locked it up before my eyes in a cabinet I had given her, in which she kept her own papers. I seldom yield to sentiment, but she—she recalled to me my own wedding—and in this instance I did so. It was the last evening we spent at home alone together. She went much to the theatre and into society, and I seldom had time to accompany her."
Monkey Brand stopped a moment. Then he went on:
"My wife saw you alone when she was dying. She was evidently anxious to see you alone. It was like her, even then, to think of others. If you tell me, on your word of honour, that she asked you to go up to the flat and burn that I O U, and that she told you where to find it—No; if she even gave you leave, as you were no doubt anxious on the subject,—if you assure me that she yielded to your entreaties, and that she even gave you leave to destroy it,—I will believe it. I will accept your statement. The last wish of my wife—if you say it was her wish—is enough for me." Monkey Brand looked out of the window at the still noonday sunshine. "I would abide by it," he said, and his face worked.
"She never spoke to me on the subject of the I O U," said Janet, two large tears rolling down her quivering cheeks. "She never gave me leave to burn it. I didn't burn it. I burnt nothing."
"Janet," almost shrieked Fred, nearly beside himself. "Janet, don't you see that—that—— Confess. Tell him you did it. We both know you did it. Own the truth."
Janet looked from one to the other.
"I burnt nothing," she said, but her eyes fell. Her word had never been doubted before.
Both men saw she was lying.
Monkey Brand's face changed. It became once again as many poor wretches had seen it, whose hard-wrung money had gone to buy his wife's gowns and diamonds.