"I shall leave this money, trusting still to your good offices," she
said, at length, rising. Her manner was much subdued. "I spoke hastily,
in a sort of blind desperation. We should not weigh too carefully the
words that are extorted by pain or fear. In less than an hour I will
send you a hundred dollars more."

Mrs. Dinneford laid the bank-bills on a table, and then moved to the
door, but she dared not leave in this uncertainty. Looking back, she
said, with an appealing humility of voice and manner foreign to her
character,

"Let us be friends still, Mrs. Bray; we shall gain nothing by being
enemies. I can serve you, and you can serve me. My suspicions were ill
founded. I felt wild and desperate, and hardly knew what I was saying."

She stood anxiously regarding the little dark-eyed woman, who did not
respond by word or movement.

Taking her hand from the door she was about opening, Mrs. Dinneford came
back into the room, and stood close to Mrs. Bray:

"Shall I send you the money?"

"You can do as you please," was replied, with chilling indifference.

"Are you implacable?"

"I am not used to suspicion, much less denunciation and assault. A
vampire! Do you know what that means?"

"It meant, as used by me, only madness. I did not know what I was
saying. It was a cry of pain--nothing more. Consider how I stand, how
much I have at stake, in what a wretched affair I have become involved.
It is all new to me, and I am bewildered and at fault. Do not desert me
in this crisis. I must have some one to stand between me and this woman;
and if you step aside, to whom can I go?"

Mrs. Bray relented just a little. Mrs. Dinneford pleaded and humiliated
herself, and drifted farther into the toils of her confederate.

"You are not rich, Mrs. Bray," she said, at parting, "independent in
spirit as you are. I shall add a hundred dollars for your own use; and
if ever you stand in need, you will know where to find an unfailing
friend."

Mrs. Bray put up her hands, and replied, "No, no, no; don't think of
such a thing. I am not mercenary. I never serve a friend for money."

But Mrs. Dinneford heard the "yes" which flushed into the voice that
said "no." She was not deceived.

A rapid change passed over Mrs. Bray on the instant her visitor left the
room. Her first act was to lock the door; her next, to take the roll of
bank-bills from the table and put it into her pocket. Over her face a
gleam of evil satisfaction had swept