"You told me nothing of the kind--you've never told me anything. Whenever I asked you a question you've always shut me up. You've kept me all along in the dark."
"Then I tell you now. Only a small sum was ever found, and that's been spent--and more than spent."
"Then am I to understand that he was fooling you when he talked about his quarter of a million?"
"I don't believe that he was. I believe he was telling the truth; that he was worth what he said; only it's never been found, and no one seems to know where it is." She held out her clenched fists in front of her, shaking them, as if she were endeavouring, by the exercise of sheer physical force, to assist her mental process. "Sometimes I feel that I know--that I am very near to knowing--that if I could do something I should know quite. It's as if I'd been told something in a dream, and, on waking, had forgotten what it was. I don't like to think of the time he died--I can't." She looked about her, as if unconscious of his presence, with something on her face, in her eyes, which startled him. "Yet if I could--if I could! I believe it would all come back to me what I have forgotten, and I should know where the money is. But I can't! I can't! Since--since the pillow slipped from under him, I--I've never been the same."
She dropped into a chair, looking straight in front of her, with her hands dangling at her sides, as if she saw--she alone knew what. This was such a new mood for her that its very novelty scared Mr. Lamb.
"Don't look like that, Belle! What are you looking at?"
"God knows! God knows!"
Mr. Lamb squirmed.
"Don't! I say, drop it! You're a cheerful sort of person, upon my word! I come here to get a pound or two, and you go on like this! Do you mean to tell me straight that we're hard up?"
"There are three things that can save us, and three things only. If I could think I might find the money."