He moved a step nearer to her and gazed down on her with a look which made her lower her sunny audacious eyes.
“You had more money than this from Massarene?”
Regaining her courage, and remembering that Katherine Massarene had probably sent her all her other signatures, she rose and faced him, throwing her fresh cigarette on the table.
“I do not admit that you have the smallest right to interrogate me. There is no one living who has. Marry his daughter, and you and she can look over his old check-books together. You are my children’s keeper, but you are not mine, and I entirely refuse to answer your insults.”
It was clear, she reflected, that Massarene had told him nothing except the facts concerning the diamonds. He might flounder about in a sea of conjecture, and make himself as wretched as ever he pleased; she was not so simple as to confess to him.
He stood above her, and his hands fell heavily on her shoulders and held her as in a vice.
“You had more money than this from Massarene?”
She was silent.
He still held her motionless, and a thrill of intense physical fear passed through her.
“You gave yourself to that brute for lucre?”