'Nothing is changed in my case,' Mr. Pomeroy answered confidently, 'except for the better. In your case everything is changed--for the worse. Did you take her part upstairs? Are your hands clean now? Does she see through you or does she not? Or, put it in another way, my friend. It is your turn; what are you going to do?'
'Go,' the tutor answered viciously. 'And glad to be quit.'
Mr. Pomeroy sat down opposite him. 'No, you'll not go,' he said in a low voice; and drinking off half his wine, set down the glass and regarded the other over it. 'Five and five are ten, Tommy. You are no fool, and I am no fool.'
'I am not such a fool as to put my neck in a noose,' the tutor retorted. 'And there is no other way of coming at what you want, Mr. Pomeroy.'
'There are twenty,' Pomeroy returned coolly. 'And, mark you, if I fail, you are spun, whether you help rue or no. You are blown on, or I can blow on you! You'll get nothing for your cut on the head.'
'And what shall I get if I stay?'
'I have told you.'
'The gallows.'
'No, Tommy. Eight hundred a year.'
Mr. Thomasson sneered incredulously, and having made it plain that he refused to think--thought! He had risked so much in this enterprise, gone through so much; and to lose it all! He cursed the girl's fickleness, her coyness, her obstinacy! He hated her. And do what he might for her now, he doubted if he could cozen her or get much from her. Yet in that lay his only chance, apart from Mr. Pomeroy. His eye was cunning and his tone sly when he spoke.