hing by trying?"

"I thought I could do a good deal. I had a hold on him, you see. I
happen to be extremely useful to him in this branch of his business. I
was trained for it; in fact, I'm hopelessly mixed up with it. Well, he
can't do very much without me, and I told him that if he didn't give
up the library I should give him up. It wasn't a nice thing to have to
say to your father--"

"And you said it?" Her face expressed both admiration and a certain
horror.

"Yes. I told him he must choose between me and his bargain."

"That must have been hard."

"He didn't seem to find it so. Anyhow, he hasn't chosen me."

"I meant hard for you to have to say it."

"I assure you it came uncommonly easy at the moment."

"Don't--don't."

"I'm not going to defend him simply because he happens to be my
father. I don't even defend myself."

"You? You didn't know."

"I knew quite enough. I knew he might cheat you without meaning to. I
didn't think he'd do it so soon or so infamously, but, to tell the
truth, I went up to town on purpose to prevent it."

"I know--I know that was what you went for." She seemed to be
answering some incessant voice that accused him, and he perceived that
the precipitancy of his action suggested a very different
interpretation. His position was odious enough in all conscience, but
as yet it had not occurred to him that he could be suspected of
complicity in the actual fraud.

"Why didn't I do something to prevent it before?"

"But--didn't you?"

"I did everything I could. I wrote to my father--if that's anything;
the result, as you see, was a cheque for the two hundred that should
have been three thousand."

"Did it never occur to you to write to anybody else, to Mr. Jewdwine,
for instance?"

She brought out the question shrinkingly, as if urged against her will
by some intolerable compulsion, and he judged that this time they had
touched what was, for her, a vital point.

"Of course it occurred to me. Haven't you heard from him?"

"I have. But hardly in time for him to do anything."

He reflected. Jewdwine had written; therefore his intentions had been
good. But he had delayed considerably in writing; evidently, then, he
had been embarrassed. He had not mentioned that he had heard from him;
and why shouldn't he have mentioned it? Oh, well--after all, why
should he? At the back of his mind there had crawled a wriggling,
worm-like suspicion of Jewdwine. He saw it wriggling and stampe