“I am going to try if I can recover my place in your estimation,” I said. “I am going to ask your pity for a man whose whole heart is yours, whose whole life is bound up in you.”
She started to her feet, and looked round her incredulously, as if doubting whether she had rightly heard and rightly interpreted my last words. Before I could speak again, she suddenly faced me, and struck her open hand on the table with a passionate resolution which I now saw in her for the first time.
“Stop!” she cried. “There must be an end to this. And an end there shall be. Do you know who that man is who has just left the house? Answer me, Mr. Germaine! I am speaking in earnest.”
There was no choice but to answer her. She was indeed in earnest—vehemently in earnest.
“His letter tells me,” I said, “that he is Mr. Van Brandt.”
She sat down again, and turned her face away from me.
“Do you know how he came to write to you?” she asked. “Do you know what made him invite you to this house?”
I thought of the suspicion that had crossed my mind when I read Van Brandt’s letter. I made no reply.
“You force me to tell you the truth,” she went on. “He asked me who you were, last night on our way home. I knew that you were rich, and that he wanted money. I told him I knew nothing of your position in the world. He was too cunning to believe me; he went out to the public-house and looked at a directory. He came back and said, ‘Mr. Germaine has a house in Berkeley Square and a country-seat in the Highlands. He is not a man for a poor devil like me to offend; I mean to make a friend of him, and I expect you to make a friend of him too.’ He sat down and wrote to you. I am living under that man’s protection, Mr. Germaine. His wife is not dead, as you may suppose; she is living, and I know her to be living. I wrote to you that I was beneath your notice, and you have obliged me to tell you why. Am I sufficiently degraded to bring you to your senses?”
I drew closer to her. She tried to get up and leave me. I knew my power over her, and used it (as any man in my place would have used it) without scruple. I took her hand.