Part 33 (1/2)

The Squire knitted his brows hard, and tried to think, but couldn't.

He could only feel. Release might be in view from the chains that already seemed to have begun to rust on him.

”I can't see my way,” he said. ”I must think it over.”

With her eyes fixed sharply and anxiously on him, she had seemed to be reading his very thoughts. She had influenced him; she could do nothing more by repet.i.tion of her plea; he must have time to think it over--and _would_ have time, whatever she might say; he was that sort of man.

She rose from the seat. ”I know you must have time,” she said. ”I know that the sum I ask for is a large one, especially if you are going to add another seven thousand on to it; but I can't take less. I won't take less. But remember what it buys you, Mr. Clinton, when you think it over. If you refuse me this money which you owe me for what you have done to me, if ever man owed woman anything, I shall speak out and bring it home to you. I would rather have peace for the rest of my days, and ease, than perpetual fighting. But I shall be ready to fight, if you refuse me, for I shall get _something_ out of that.”

He rose too. ”You needn't go over all that again,” he said. ”If I consider it right to do this I will do it. If not, no threats will weigh with me.”

”Very well,” she said. ”If you accept, as of course you will, for it _is_ right to do it, you will want to see me again to settle details.

Probably you won't want to pay the money all at once, and we can arrange that. You will want to be a.s.sured that I shan't come down on you again, that my silence will be absolutely unbroken. I can satisfy you as to that too; I have thought out a way. There will be other details to settle. You won't want to see me down here again. You must come to see me in London. I will help you in every way I can.”

She gave him an address.

”Now I will go,” she said. ”Show me a way out without my pa.s.sing the house.”

They walked round the lower end of the lake together, neither of them speaking a word. He took her to a gate leading into a lane. ”If you follow that to the left,” he said, ”you will come to the village.”

She went through the gate which he held open for her. Then she turned and looked at him out of level eyes, and said before she walked away: ”If you do what I ask, you will hear nothing more of me after we have settled matters. If you don't, I will punish you somehow--in addition--for not receiving me into your house.”

CHAPTER III

THE STRAIGHT PATH

”Mr. Clinton has had to go to Bathgate, ma'am. He told me to say he would dine at the club and might be late home. He partic'ly asked that you and Miss Joan--Miss Clinton--shouldn't sit up for him.”

The old butler gave his message as if there was more behind it than appeared from his words. Mrs. Clinton, standing in the hall, in her travelling cloak, looked puzzled and a little anxious. It was unlike her husband not to be at home to meet her, especially when she and Joan were returning from so comparatively long a visit--and there was something so very interesting to talk about. And, although he frequently lunched at the County Club in Bathgate, he had not dined there half a dozen times since their marriage.

”Is Mr. Clinton quite well?” she asked, preparing to move away.

”Well, ma'am, I don't think he is quite well. We've all noticed it.

Or it seems more as if he was worried about something. But he's not eating well, ma'am, and not sleeping well.”

”Poor father!” said Joan, standing by her mother. ”We've been too long away from him. We'll cheer him up, and soon put him right, mother.”

Mrs. Clinton went to bed at half-past ten, as usual. The Squire came home at eleven o'clock. It was the hour when he expected her to have her light out, if he should come up then.

He went straight to her room. It was in darkness. ”Well, Nina,” he said from the door, ”you're back safely. Sorry I had to be out when you arrived. I'll come to you in a few minutes.”

He went along to his dressing-room. Just outside it, in the broad carpeted corridor was Joan. She was in a white dressing-gown, her hair in a thick plait down her back. She looked hardly older than the child she had been five years before.

”Father dear!” she said. ”How naughty of you to be away when we came home! Have you heard about it?”

Her beautiful eyes, swimming with tender happiness, looked up into his.

She had come close for his embrace.

”My dear child!” he said, kissing her. ”My little Joan!”

”I thought you'd be glad,” she said, nestling to him. ”I'm so frightfully happy, father.”