A Life's Secret: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

'It will be startling news for her.'

'It will: should it come to the telling. Better that she hear it, and make the best and the worst of it, than that I should reduce her to utter poverty—and your demands, supplied, would do that. The news will not kill her—as it might have killed her mother.'

Did Lawyer Gwinn feel baffled? For a minute or two he seemed to be at a loss for words. 'I will have money,' he exclaimed at length. 'You have tried to stand out against it before now.'

'Man! do you know that I am on the brink of ruin?' uttered Mr. Hunter, in deep excitement, 'and that it is you who have brought me to it?' But for the money supplied to you, I could have weathered successfully this contest with my workmen, as my brother and others are weathering it. If you have any further claim against me,' he added in a spirit of mocking bitterness, 'bring it against my bankruptcy, for that is looming near.'

'I will not stir from your house without a cheque for the money.'

'This house is sanctified by the presence of the dead,' reverently spoke Mr. Hunter. 'To have any disturbance in it would be most unseemly. Do not force me to call in a policeman.'

'As a policeman was once called into you, in the years gone by,' Lawyer Gwinn was beginning with a sneer: but Mr. Hunter raised his voice and his hand.

'Be still! Coward as I have been, in one sense, in yielding to your terms, I have never been coward enough to permit you to allude, in my presence, to the past. I never will. Go from my house quietly, sir: and do not attempt to re-enter it.'

Mr. Hunter broke from the man—for Gwinn made an effort to detain him—opened the door, and called to the servant, who came forward.

'Show this person to the door, Richard.'