' I paid you a high price, and you cheated me,' he said. ' I paid you again. That was not enough, but you must needs tell her. That is the sort of woman you are.'
Dorothy sat up.
' Either you are mad or I,' she said. ' I think it is you. As I told you, your wife annoyed me. She was prim, priggish, Puritan. I thought it would do her good to know that once you were foolish enough to write me a letter. I wished I had kept it, I remember. I should have liked to have seen her face when I showed it her. I can't bear prigs. But you paying me, and I cheating you? If you will excuse the expression, I wish the devil you would tell me what you mean.'
Bertie leant forward.
' You are inimitable,' he said. ' I never much respected your power as an actress till to-day. But I see I was wrong. You told me you were getting rich. So rich, perhaps, that ten thousand pounds for a forgery, and then five thousand more, escape your memory.'
He got up; the mere statement of what she had done, now that he was face to face with her, infuriated him to a sort of madness of rage.
' If you will excuse the expression, you devil,' he said.
He came a step nearer, and saw her shrink from him, and look round as if to see where the bell was.
' No, no; I am not going to touch you,' he said. ' You needn't be frightened.'
He took from his pocket the letters, and unfolded them.
' Do you remember this, and this?' he said. ' And this, a copy of the instructions you gave? All that I think I could have forgiven you. But on the top of it, you tell Amelie. By your own confession you tell her that, and anything more, I suppose, that occurred to you. No doubt you told her that you had gratified my passion for you.
