"Very good," acquiesced Stubbs.
"Is that woman gone yet?"
"No, sir. My opinion is, she means to wait until she sees you."
"Then send her in at once, and let's get it over," thundered Mr. Dare.
In what lay his objection to seeing her? A dread lest she should put forth their relationship as a plea for his clemency? If so, he was destined to be agreeably disappointed. Jane did not allude to it; would not allude to it. After that interview held with Mrs. Dare, some three or four months before, she had dropped all remembrance of the connection: even the children did not know of it. She only solicited Mr. Dare's leniency now, as any other stranger might have solicited it. Little chance was there of Mr. Dare's acceding to her prayer: he and his wife both wanted Helstonleigh to be free of the Halliburtons.
"It will be utter ruin," she urged. "It will turn us, beggars, into the streets. Mr. Dare, I promise you the rent by the middle of February. Unless it were certain, my brother would not have promised it to me. Surely you may accord me this short time."
"Ma'am, I cannot—that is, Mr. Ashley cannot. It was a reprehensible piece of carelessness on my part to suffer the rent to go on for half a year, considering that you were strangers. Mr. Ashley will look to me to see him well out of it."
"There is sufficient furniture in my house, new furniture, to pay what is owing three times over."
"May be, as it stands in it. Things worth forty pounds in a house, won't fetch ten at a sale."
"That is an additional reason why I——"