Jane continued looking down with knitted brows; she stirred the shingle with one foot, playing with the pebbles, yet regarding them not.
'I do not admit anything,' she said sullenly. 'You are troubled with a bad fancy. But even——'
'It is no fancy. I could not mistake your words.'
'Suppose it has been as you think. I do not allow it, but let us say that old Captain Job did leave a trifle of money, and that I found and kept it. I had a right to it. It was money taken from my father, squeezed out of his veins. It was the price of my brother's blood.'
'O mother, you do not know this.'
'I do know that my father worked for years under the captain, and died penniless. I do know that my brother was shot when he set up for himself apart from the captain.'
'But you do not know that Captain Rattenbury was responsible in either case.'
'They were in the same business. The money stuck in some hands, and none in those of my father.'
'Mother, dear, you owe all this to what Olver Dench has been saying to you. What is his word worth?'
'Of all men none is so likely to know the truth as Olver.'