While you're away I'll try to think out something."
"You're a dear, sweet soul."
He made as though to embrace her; but she pushed his arm away, almost roughly.
"Don't!" she cried. "I couldn't bear to kiss you, when I think of what you've done."
Dermot bowed his head meekly before the storm of her indignation.
"I—I'm awfully sorry, Lal," he stammered, brokenly. "I had no idea"
"Stop! Stop!" she interrupted. "Be quiet. Let me think how on earth I'm to get you out of this ghastly mess you've landed us in."
"Mr. Bleke—don't go. I want to speak to you."
Roland stared in astonishment at his hostess. Never before had he seen Mrs. Windleband exhibit the slightest sign of anything that could be construed as agitation. She had always struck him as the calmest woman he had ever met. Nothing ever ruffled her. But now she looked pale and anxious. There were great dark rings under her eyes, which were red, as if she had been crying.
"Please shut the door—and make sure that none of the servants are about."
Roland obeyed her, wondering what in the world it all meant.
"Mr. Bleke," she began, in faltering accents, when he had come back to the tea-table, "promise me—on your word of honour—that you will never speak to a living soul of what I am going to tell you."
Roland gave her to understand that, compared with him, the tomb would be a chatterbox.
"Mr. Bleke—I don't know how to tell you—but my husband has swindled you!"
The poor woman's distress, as she made the hateful confession, was pathetic to witness. Agitated and shocked as Roland was by the disturbing intelligence which she had just imparted, his heart was filled with pity for her.
"Swindled me? Your husband swindled me, Mrs. Windleband! I can't believe it."
"Neither could I, at first—when he confessed it to me," came the reply, in heart-broken accents. "But it's only too dreadfully true. He told me last night, and, Mr. Bleke, I haven't known a minute's peace since. I cried all night; and this morning I made up my mind that I must let you know everything and—and try to make what reparation I can!"
Mrs. Windleband's further utterance was choked by a storm of sobs. Whilst he had every sympathy with her distress, Roland wished Mrs. Windleband would not take her husband's delinquencies quite so much to heart. Without any desire to hurry her unduly over her lamentations, Roland felt a pardonable anxiety to know how—but perhaps more particularly of how much—he had been swindled by her villainous husband.
Presently Mrs. Windleband recovered sufficiently to explain:—
"It was over those shares he sold to you—those Wildc-c-cats! They're worthless!" And then there came a fresh deluge.
Wildcats worthless! Roland's heart stopped beating.
"Oh, Mr. Bleke, forgive him, please!" pleaded Mrs. Windleband, holding out her clasped hands in a gesture of entreaty. "You don't know how much he was tempted. People were pressing him for money on every side—he has so many enemies—he didn't know where to turn—ruin was staring him in the face! And then, when you came along with all that money at your disposal—it was t-t-too much for him!"
"Can't quite see that," was Roland's rueful reply. "If it was too much for him, why couldn't he have left me some of it, instead of taking pretty well every shilling I've got?"
"How much did you pay for the shares?" asked Mrs. Windleband, ignoring Roland's last remark.
"Thirty thousand pounds—that's what he had out of me for them," said Roland, bitterly.
"Oh, thank Heaven, thank Heaven!" cried Mrs. Windleband, in accents of heartfelt relief. For his part, Roland could see nothing whatever to thank Heaven for; and he said so.
"Ah, but if it's no more than thirty thousand pounds, I can put everything right again," explained Mrs. Windleband, joyfully. "Or very nearly, at all events."
Thirty thousand pounds, it occurred to Roland, was a little matter which would take some putting right. He felt some curiosity as to how Mrs. Windleband proposed to do it.
"Why, I have some money of my own, you see," she explained. "I wouldn't let Dermot have it, though he begged me ever so hard, because I wanted to have something secured for us to live on, in case the worst came to the worst. But I would rather part with my last penny and die in the gutter than have Dermot dishonoured!"
With trembling fingers she drew out of her
