"I don't care that for his ancestors," said Mrs. Levitt with a gesture of the thumb.
"You may not. I certainly don't. But other people do. Major Markham, the
Hawtreys, the Thurstons, even the Corbetts, do you suppose they're all
going to turn against him because he lost his head for a minute on a
Wednesday? Ten to one they'll all think, and say, you made him do it."
"I made him? Preposterous!"
"Not so preposterous as you imagine. You must make allowances for people's prejudices. If you wanted to stand clear you shouldn't have taken all that money from him."
"All that money indeed! A loan, a mere temporary loan, for an investment he recommended."
"Not only that loan, but—" Barbara produced the cheque books with their damning counterfoils. "Look here—twenty-five pounds on the thirty-first of January. And here—October last year, and July, and January before that—More than a hundred and fifty altogether. How are you going to account for that?
"And who's going to believe that Mr. Waddington paid all that for nothing, if some particularly nasty person gets up and says he didn't? You see what a horrible position you'd be in, don't you?"
Mrs. Levitt didn't answer. Her face thickened slightly with a dreadful flush. Her nerve was going.
Barbara watched it go. She followed up her advantage. "And supposing I were to tell everybody—his friend, Major Markham, say—that you were pressing him for that five hundred, immediately after the affair of Wednesday, on threats of exposure, wouldn't that look very like blackmail?"
"Blackmail? Really, Miss Madden—"