Adela looked from one to the other, her face changing pitiably; now white as snow with fear, now hectic with emotion and shame.
"Mr. Grubb has full power in Leadenhall Street," she pleaded. "He will take care to shield me."
"Are you sure of that?" quietly asked her father. "Has your conduct to him been such—I don't allude to this one pitiable instance, I speak of your treatment of him generally—has it been such that you can assume he will inevitably go out of his way to shield you, right or wrong?"
In spite of the miserable shame that filled her, a passing flush of triumph crossed her face. Ay! and her heart. What though she had persistently done her best to estrange her husband, with her provoking ways and her scornful contumely, very conscious felt she that she was all in all to him still. Why, had he not begged of her to confide this thing to him, and he would make it straight and guard her from exposure?
"I have nothing to fear from him, papa; I know it. It will be all right."
"How can you assert this in barefaced confidence, you wicked child?" groaned Lady Acorn. "I would not—no, I would not be so brazen for the world."
"Adela, don't deceive yourself with vain expectations; it may be harder for you in the end," interposed her father, once more making a deprecatory motion towards the place where his wife's tongue lay. "You are assuming a surety which you have no right to feel; better look the truth sternly in the face."
"I am his wife, papa," she faintly urged. "He will be sure to shelter me."
"He may be able to shelter you from exposure; I doubt not but that he will do it, so far as he can, for his own sake as well as for yours; for all our sakes, indeed. But——"
"A few years ago you might have been hanged," struck in Lady Acorn. "Hanged outside Newgate. I can remember the time when death was the penalty for forgery. Dr. Dodd was hung for it. How would you have liked that?"