"Surely you can tell me yourself, without my further imperilling Julia's lot in the next world." She stamped her foot with impatience. She had never known him quite in this mood before. She wished he would get thoroughly angry, like he had been when he came in. "You will be shocked at the downfall of your immaculate angel. However, if you want to know I will tell you. She was in the habit of making assignations with some low man who came down from London and used to meet her about Thorpe--once they were caught actually in the churchyard late at night--some man named Jabez! What do you think of that?" "Very natural under the circumstances!" "Very----" She looked at him utterly perplexed. "Under what circumstances?" "Under the circumstances that he is her brother, and that she lived with a cat." "Her brother! Her br-o-th-er!--as much her brother as you are, or would like to be! It's just like you to believe a tale like that." "Not only do I believe it, but it is true. It is also true that Julia stole this will. The creature Shorty--Mrs. Parsley's _protégé_ that is--was prowling about the house the night we were all dining there--Christmas Eve, when the poor old man was killed--and swears he saw her enter the library during Barton's absence for a moment. She picked up the will, read it, and pocketed it." "And how much, pray, did you pay this ruffian for this information?" "That's my business. You may be quite sure it's worth double what I paid for it." "How then do you explain it's being in Mrs. Gerald Arkel's work-box?" "Malice--pure malice on the part of that most malicious of women, Julia Darrow." "But she could know nothing of there being a false top to the work-box." "She could know anything--everything. Ask Dicky, and he'll tell you that he showed his mother how the thing worked." "Well, I'm sick to death of the subject," she retorted impatiently. "The question is, what do you intend to do with the will now you've got it?" "Why, what do you think I'd do with it? There is only one thing that I or anyone else with a spark of honour," he looked at her very searchingly, "_could_ do with it--take it to Rosary Mansions this evening, and lay it before both of them." "John!--you are not serious? I implore you don't do that. Consider what it means. Consider me. It is not fair to me. I was not meant to be a poor man's wife." "You are not fit to be any decent man's wife; but as you are, and I can't descend to your moral level, you must rise to mine, that's all." "If you do this you shall pay for it," she said. She was losing all self-control and becoming perfectly reckless in the face of what threatened her. "I am your wife now. I married you for this money--the day you lose it, you lose me--understand." He seized her arm somewhat roughly and looked at her hard.