‘Everything?’ he asked.
‘Everything,’ she answered in the same hard, dry voice; a slight trembling of her long, thin fingers was the only sign that betrayed the emotion pent up within. ‘Dear friend,’ she went on, ‘I want you at once to find Sir William and tell him everything as I told it to you on Wednesday. It will then be for him to decide whether he can accept the sister of an ex-convict’s wife for his daughter-in-law. If he cannot, then God help my poor Clarice! But nothing must be kept back from him, whatever the result may be.’ Then after a little pause, she said, looking earnestly into his face: ‘Do you not agree with me?’
‘I do,’ he answered. ‘The right thing is always the best thing to do, whatever consequences may follow. Depend upon it, you will lose nothing in the eyes of Sir William by throwing yourself on his generosity in the way you propose doing.—But I have had news. Sir William will be here—at the Palatine—in the course of a few hours.’
‘Ah! So much the better. So will the climax come all the more quickly. But, my poor Clari! Oh, my poor, darling Clari!’ Her lips quivered, a stifled sob broke from her heart, but her eyes were as dry and tearless as before.
The colonel waited a moment, and then he said: ‘What you purpose telling a certain person at your interview this evening will enable you to set him at defiance—will it not?’
‘It will—thoroughly and completely. I shall have taken the initiative out of his hands, and he will be powerless to harm me.’
‘Your fortune?’ he said.
‘Is settled strictly on myself. He cannot touch a penny of it.’ Then, after a pause, she added: ‘Not that I want him to starve; not that I would refuse him a certain share of my money—if I could only feel sure it would keep him from evil courses. But it would never do that—never! In such as he, there is no possibility of change.’
‘I will make a point of seeing Sir William as soon as he arrives,’ said the colonel as he rose and pushed back his chair. ‘I suppose that is what you would like me to do?’
‘The sooner the better,’ answered Mora, also rising. ‘You will come to me the moment you have any news?’