Katherine was silent: she thought that probably the Duchess of Otterbourne had owed very much more than that to her father.
Hurstmanceaux breathed heavily: he was overwhelmed with shame at what he was forced to say.
“Apparently,” he continued, “she owed this amount to Beaumont, the jeweler in the Rue de la Paix. Your father sent me Beaumont’s receipt to him, and my sister’s acknowledgment of her debt to him, for the payment to Beaumont. She is now in Norway with the Bassenthwaites; but the two signatures make the matter quite clear. There is no necessity for any inquiry.”
He paused, struggling with an emotion which he feared would get the better of his manhood.
Katherine saw that, and it affected her keenly.
“He sent you those signatures!” she said, as a sense of her father’s cruelty dawned on her. “What a brutal, what an infamous thing to do! What a message from the grave!”
“Mr. Massarene was quite within his rights,” said Ronald stiffly: “wholly within them. As my sister’s husband is dead, I am the person to whom her creditors should apply. I blame him for lending her such a sum, without my knowledge, in his lifetime. It is impossible to say to you what I suffer in finding her—in finding her——”
His voice broke down; for an instant he walked away to the window nearest him, and looked out in silence.
Katherine did not reply.
She was thinking of the many times, in her father’s private account books, in which Lady Kenilworth’s name was written, the many slips in the old check-books in which there was also written, in her father’s hand: “Drawn self: passed to Lady K.”