"So it was—but only in a way," she said laboriously. Her face burned and paled. "I tried to bribe him, but——"
"Bribe him! How?..."
"With the money—the money I had left," she replied cautiously.
"What have you left?" he ventured.
Curiously enough, Mrs. Challoner found herself taking a certain amount of satisfaction in telling her lawyer what now was unquestionably true.
"My home—only."
"But that's mortgaged, I understand?" There was more than idle curiosity in the speaker's eyes.
"Yes. But there's an equity of about twenty or twenty-five thousand," she explained.
"And you tried to bribe Murgatroyd with twenty thousand dollars?"
There was no answer; and interpreting her silence as assent, he went on persistently:—