How should she act? She was calmly contemplating what might occur. Her head reeled, for she had not closed her eyes since she had last stood in that room face to face with her enemy—the man who had filched the secret from them and departed.
His threats rang in her ears. If she revealed the truth, then Mullet would be arrested, and in addition a foul lie, which alas! she could not refute, would be told both her lover and her father! She shuddered and held her breath. Had she not already promised secrecy to Mullet! Could she, after his self-sacrifice, deliberately bring ruin upon him?
No. She was hemmed in on every side by the impossible. And even if she told the truth, it was now too late, alas! Sir Felix Challas, great financier that he was, had agents in all the capitals, and possessed secret channels of information against which their little combination would be utterly powerless. Alas! they were now only tilting at the wind.
That red-faced blatant parvenu, that Jew-hating hypocrite who did his evil doings behind his moneybags, had triumphed!
Whatever she said, whatever allegation she made against the Baronet or Jim Jannaway—for she now for the first time had learnt his name—would make no difference. The bitterness of it all must fall upon her, and her alone.
Her young heart was crushed, stifled, broken.
If she spoke, or if she were silent, it was the same—she must play her lover false.