She carried out the first robbery, a most fruitful one for those who engineered it, and this resulted in the disgrace of Croxton and his banishment from his benefactor’s house.
She carried out the second, although she vehemently warned the two scoundrels that as Richard was no longer a member of the household, suspicion might easily be diverted into other quarters. Her arguments had no influence on them. Morrice, while sure of the guilt of his secretary, had spared him. If discovery did ensue, he would be equally sure to keep silence about his own wife.
The third time she opened the safe on her own initiative, driven to do so by a fit of remorse. The second robbery, it will be remembered, had produced poor results, the booty being inconsiderable and a portion of it valueless to the persons into whose hands it fell. It struck the distraught woman that in putting back the Swiss notes and the packet of private papers, she was making an act of reparation.
CHAPTER XXIX
SIR GEORGE IS ARRESTED
The long narrative was finished. Three times had Miss Buckley opened the door, intimating by that action that it was time the interview was concluded, and each time Mrs. Morrice had signalled to her to withdraw.
It only remained now for the wretched woman to sign the confession admitting her guilt, and clearing Richard Croxton in the eyes of those who held him in regard.
Had Rosabelle been present she would have shed compassionate tears over those passages in which Mrs. Morrice described the mental tortures she had suffered through the machinations of this evil pair.
But Lane was made of sterner stuff. She had been deeply sinned against, it was true, but she had been a great sinner herself. She had been the victim of a tragic set of circumstances which might well have appalled the bravest woman, but in her selfish desire to keep herself afloat, she had chosen the line of least resistance.
Apart from her lapse into actual criminal courses, there were three things he could not forgive her for, her callous abandonment of her child, the son of a felon it is true, but still “flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone”; the equally callous sacrifice of Richard Croxton; her unscrupulous conduct in marrying Morrice, an honourable and upright man, under false pretences. True, that if she had told him the truth about her past he would not have married her, but it was little short of dastardly to involve him in her own unhappy career.
Anticipating that he would have no difficulty in wringing the truth out of her, Lane had brought with him the confession ready written for her to sign. But, before handing it to her, he had a few questions to put upon collateral points.