Gabrielle, on her return from school, had at first accepted Flockart as her friend. It was he who took her for walks, who taught her to cast a fly, to shoot rooks, and to play the national winter game of Scotland—curling. He had in the first few months of her return home done everything in his power to attract the young girl's friendship, while at the same time her ladyship showed herself extraordinarily well disposed towards her.
Within a year, however, by reason of various remarks made by people in her presence, and on account of the cold disdain with which Lady Heyburn treated her afflicted father, vague suspicions were aroused within her, suspicions which gradually grew to hatred, until she clung to her father, and, as his eyes and ears, took up a position of open defiance towards her mother and her adventurous friend.
The situation each day grew more and more strained. Lady Heyburn was, even though of humble origin, a woman of unusual intelligence. In various quarters she had been snubbed and ridiculed, but she gradually managed in every case to get the better of her enemies. Many a man and many a woman had had bitter cause to repent their enmity towards her. They marvelled how their secrets became known to her.
They did not know the power behind her—the sinister power of that ingenious and unscrupulous man, James Flockart—the man who made it his business to know other people's secrets. Though for years he had been seized with a desire to get at the bottom of Sir Henry's private affairs, he had never succeeded. The old Baronet was essentially a recluse; he kept himself so much to himself, and was so careful that no eyes save those of his daughter should see the mysterious documents which came to him so regularly by registered post, that all Flockart's efforts and those of Lady Heyburn had been futile.
"I had another good look at the safe this morning," the man went on presently. "It is one of the best makes, and would resist anything, except, of course, the electric current."
"To force it would be to put Henry on his guard," Lady Heyburn remarked, "If we are to know what secrets are there, and use our knowledge for our own benefit, we must open it with a key and relock it."
"Well, Winnie, we must do something. We must both have money—that's quite evident," he said. "That last five hundred you gave me will stave off ruin for a week or so. But after that we must certainly be well supplied, or else there may be revelations well—which will be as ugly for yourself as for me."
"I know," she exclaimed. "I fully realise the necessity of getting funds. The other affair, though we worked it so well, proved a miserable fiasco."
"And very nearly gave us away into the bargain," he declared. "I tell you frankly, Winnie, that if we can't pay a level five thousand in three weeks' time the truth will be out, and you know what that will mean."
He was watching her handsome face as he spoke, and he noticed how pale and drawn were her features as he referred to certain ugly truths that might leak out.