"Don't—don't."
"I'm not going to defend him simply because he happens to be my father. I don't even defend myself."
"You? You didn't know."
"I knew quite enough. I knew he might cheat you without meaning to. I didn't think he'd do it so soon or so infamously, but, to tell the truth, I went up to town on purpose to prevent it."
"I know—I know that was what you went for." She seemed to be answering some incessant voice that accused him, and he perceived that the precipitancy of his action suggested a very different interpretation. His position was odious enough in all conscience, but as yet it had not occurred to him that he could be suspected of complicity in the actual fraud.
"Why didn't I do something to prevent it before?"
"But—didn't you?"
"I did everything I could. I wrote to my father—if that's anything; the result, as you see, was a cheque for the two hundred that should have been three thousand."
"Did it never occur to you to write to anybody else, to Mr. Jewdwine, for instance?"
She brought out the question shrinkingly, as if urged against her will by some intolerable compulsion, and he judged that this time they had touched what was, for her, a vital point.