“Ah, Herbert, it is too cruel of you—too cruel—after all I’ve done to help you. Have you no pity, no compassion?”
“None,” he growled. “I want money and must have it. In a week you must pay me a thousand quid—you hear that, don’t you?”
“But how can I? Wait and I’ll give it to you later—indeed, I promise.”
“I tell you I ain’t going to be fooled,” he cried angrily. “I mean to have the money, or else I’ll blow the whole thing. Then where will you be—eh?” And he laughed a hard triumphant laugh, while she shrank back pale, breathless and dismayed.
I clenched my fists, and to this moment I do not know how I restrained myself from springing from my hiding-place and knocking the fellow down. At that moment I could have killed him where he stood.
“Ah!” she cried, her hands clasped to him in a gesture of supplication, “you surely don’t mean what you say, you can’t mean that, you really can’t! You’ll spare me, won’t you? Promise me!”
“No, I won’t spare you,” was his brutal reply, “unless you pay me well.”
“I will, I will,” she assured him in a low, hoarse voice, which was eminently that of a desperate woman, terrified lest some terrible secret of hers should be exposed.
“Ah!” he sneered with curling lip, “you treated me with contempt once, because you were a fine lady, but I am yet to have my revenge, as you will see. You are now mistress of a great fortune, and I tell you quite plainly that I intend you to share it with me. Act just as you think best, but recollect what refusal will mean to you—exposure!”
“Ah!” she cried desperately, “to-night you have revealed yourself in your true light! You brute, you would, without the slightest compunction, ruin me!”