With a face that was afraid to relax its tension, he said, with an effort at something like his ordinary speech:
"Rankin, you forsook me sadly to-day, did you not? But I can still count on you to do me a good turn—if only in return for to-day."
"Go on, Geoffrey. Yes, I have disliked you from the first. But now I don't. You make people like you, no matter what you do. You take it like a man. What do you want?"
Rankin could not command his countenance as Geoffrey could. Now that he had accomplished the work of convicting him, it seemed terrible that one who, with all his faults, appeared so manly a man, and so brave, should be on his way to six years' darkness.
Geoffrey pulled him closer and whispered in his ear: "Go to Margaret—at once—before she can read anything! Take a cab. Tell her all. Break it to her. You can put it gently. Go to her now—let her know, fairly, before you come away, that all my chances are gone—that she is released—that I am nothing—now—but a dead man."
His head went down as the words were finished with a wild effort, and his great frame shook convulsively for a moment. The thought of Margaret killed him.
During the day, before his arrest, he had seen that he would have to return at least part of the money to corroborate his story and to save Jack. And he could not abscond with the balance, because that would mean the loss of Margaret. By returning the money and saving himself from imprisonment, he had hoped that eventually she would forgive him. And now—
Maurice could not stand it. He said, hurriedly: "All right. I'll see you to-morrow." And then he dashed off, out a side door, and into a cab. And on the way to Margaret he wept like a child behind the carriage curtains for the fate of the man whom he had convicted.