"I wished to make a bargain with you."
"To make a bargain!"
"Yes. I thought of offering to tell you the whole truth if you would consent to make provision for my wife and child. She is an uneducated woman, and the boy is a cripple. They are two helpless creatures, and they are absolutely innocent; they do not even know my real name. They believe I am——"
"James Russell!"
"Yes! You know that! That is what I thought, else you would not have been in St. Paul. Will you consent to make some provision for them, if I declare everything without concealment or reserve? I do not know how much you do know?" he added inquiringly.
"I know a good deal, but not all. I know you did not lose the money on the Stock Exchange, as you told my father, but that you—appropriated it to your own use, and still have it, I imagine. Is it not so?"
"Yes. That money shall be restored to you in trust for your father and the firm, if you will accede to my suggestion about my wife and child. What more do you know?"
"I know you led a double life, and that you entered into a conspiracy with Ucelli, the Syndic of Camajore. But I do not know what passed between you and Morris Thornton the night he died."
"I will tell you the whole story," said Silwood, "if you will agree to see my wife and child suitably provided for."
"And if I refuse?"