Part 39 (1/2)

Gone! A feeling of desolation and helplessness swept over Joan.

Gone when she had counted so on his help! She remembered what she had written: ”I ask you earnestly to leave Starden,” and he had obeyed her.

It was her own fault; she had driven him away, and now she needed him.

The girl was watching her out of the corner of her small black eyes. She saw Joan tear up the letter she had commenced to write.

”It was to him, she didn't know he had gone,” Alice Betts thought, and Alice Betts was right.

Mr. Philip Slotman had fallen on evil days, yet Mr. Philip Slotman's wardrobe of excellent and tasteful clothes was so large and varied that poverty was not likely to affect his appearance for a long time to come.

Presumably also his stock of cigars was large, for leaning against the gate beside the tumble-down barn he was drowning the clean smell of the earth and the night with the more insinuating and somewhat sickly smell of a fine Havannah.

Some way down the road, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, stood a large shabby car drawn up against a hedge, and in that car dozed a chauffeur.

Mr. Slotman took out his watch and looked at it in the dim light.

It was past nine, and he muttered an oath under his breath.

”She won't be such a fool as not to come now that fellow's gone!” he thought, and he was right, for a few moments later she was there.

”So you did come?”

”I am here,” Joan said quietly. ”You wish to speak to me?”

”Don't be so confoundedly hold-off! Aren't you going to shake hands?”

”Certainly not!”

”Oh, very well!” he snarled. ”Don't then. Still putting on your airs, my lady!”

”I am here to hear anything you wish to say to me. Any threats that you have to make, any bargain that you wish to propose. I thought when I paid you that money--”

”That money's gone; it went in a few hours.”

He felt savagely angry at her calmness, at her pride and superiority.

Why, knowing what he knew, she ought to be pretty well on her knees to him.

”Please tell me what you wish to see me about and let me go. It is money, of course?”

Her voice was level, filled with scorn and utter contempt, and it made the man writhe in helpless fury.

”Look here, stow that!” he said coa.r.s.ely. ”Don't ride the high horse with me. Remember I know you, know all about you. I know who you are and what you are, and--and don't--don't”--he was stuttering and stammering in his rage--”don't think you can put me in my place, because you can't!”

Joan did not answer.

”If I want money I've got a right to ask for it! And I do. I've got something to sell, ain't I?--knowledge and silence. And silence is worth a lot, my girl, when a woman's engaged to be married, and when there's things in her past she don't care about people knowing of. Yes, Miss Joan Meredyth, my lady clerk on three quid a week was one person, but Miss Meredyth of Starden Hall, engaged to be married to Mr. John Everard of Buddesby, is another, ain't she?”

”Please say what you have to say,” she said coldly. ”I do not wish to stay here with you.”