His cheek paled on the instant. "Hush! Not a word about it here," he whispered, with a quick, apprehensive glance around. "If the wretches hereabouts once suspected that I had anything more than the merest trifle in the way of money in my possession, I should be a dead man before to-morrow morning. Will you come into my room for three minutes, Miss Rivers? You may safely do so, and I won't detain you longer."
Mr. Wingate was still keeping watch and ward at the corner of the street. "Lead the way and I will follow," was all she said.
Accordingly, they entered the house, and after Varrel had shut the door behind them he led the way up a rickety staircase, the handrail of which had been torn away, into a small back room on the first floor. Never before had Hermia been in such a room; but the evening was drawing in by this time, and in the half light its more sordid features did not seem so obtrusive as they would have done at mid-day.
"Not a palace, truly, Miss Rivers," he said, with a shrug and a cynical smile, "but cheerful, homelike, nay, almost luxurious in comparison with some of its neighbors."
Hermia's only reply was an involuntary shudder.
Motioning her to the one chair in the place, he seated himself on the edge of a box, and cut the string of the parcel, which Hermia had handed him on entering the room. Before him lay the envelope and its contents, together with the bag of gold. He looked up, and his and Hermia's eyes met.
"This," he said, laying a finger on the envelope, "my mother was to keep for me until I should choose to reclaim it; but this," shifting his finger to the bag, "was for her sole use, as I told her when I gave it her--to buy whatever she wanted, and help to make her comfortable."
"Your mother refused to touch it, Mr. Varrel," replied Hermia, looking him steadily in the face.
"What do you mean?" he demanded, with startling suddenness. "Who told you she would not touch it?"
"She herself. She said there was blood on it--those were her words--and that she would have nothing to do with it till you had proved to her how you had come by it."