“I cannot sit,” she said. “Mr. Godolphin, you were to have been my son-in-law: you would have been so now had Ethel lived. Do you consider Ethel to be any link between us still?”
He was quite at a loss what to answer. He did not understand what she meant. Lady Sarah continued.
“If you do; if you retain any fond remembrance of Ethel; you will prove it now. I had seven hundred pounds in your Bank. I have been scraping and saving out of my poor yearly income nearly ever since Ethel went; and I had placed it there. Can you deny it?”
“Dear Lady Sarah, what is the matter?” he asked; for her excitement was something frightful. “I know you had it there. Why should I deny it?”
“Oh, that’s right. People have been saying the Bank was going to repudiate all claims. I want you to give it me. Now: privately.”
“It is impossible for me to do so, Lady Sarah——”
“I cannot lose it; I have been saving it up for my poor child,” she interrupted, in a most excited tone. “She will not have much when I am dead. Would you be so cruel as to rob the widow and the orphan?”
“Not willingly. Never willingly,” he answered in his pain. “I had thought, Lady Sarah, that though all the world misjudged me, you would not.”
“Could you not, you who were to have married Ethel, have given me a private hint of it when you found the Bank was going wrong? Others may afford to lose their money, but I cannot.”
“I did not know it was going wrong,” he said. “The blow has fallen upon me as unexpectedly as it has upon others.”