Mrs. Bray made no response, did not even turn toward her visitor.
“I spoke hastily.”
“A vampire!” Mrs. Bray swept round upon her fiercely. “A blood-sucker!” and she ground her teeth in well-feigned passion.
Mrs. Dinneford sat down trembling.
“Take your money and go,” said Mrs. Bray, and she lifted the bills from the floor and tossed them into her visitor's lap. “I am served right. It was evil work, and good never comes of evil.”
But Mrs. Dinneford did not stir. To go away at enmity with this woman was, so far as she could see, to meet exposure and unutterable disgrace. Anything but that.
“I shall leave this money, trusting still to your good offices,” she said, at length, rising. Her manner was much subdued. “I spoke hastily, in a sort of blind desperation. We should not weigh too carefully the words that are extorted by pain or fear. In less than an hour I will send you a hundred dollars more.”
Mrs. Dinneford laid the bank-bills on a table, and then moved to the door, but she dared not leave in this uncertainty. Looking back, she said, with an appealing humility of voice and manner foreign to her character,
“Let us be friends still, Mrs. Bray; we shall gain nothing by being enemies. I can serve you, and you can serve me. My suspicions were ill founded. I felt wild and desperate, and hardly knew what I was saying.”
She stood anxiously regarding the little dark-eyed woman, who did not respond by word or movement.