The whole interview was becoming too utterly ridiculous. But what could be said or done? It was the heaps of silver coins lying about that rendered the situation so extremely difficult. Useless for Raphael Craig to pretend that he and Teresa had been engaged in some perfectly usual and common-place task. Useless for Richard, notwithstanding his lame explanation, to pretend that he had not been spying. The heaps of silver made all parties excessively self-conscious, and when you are self-conscious you can never say the right thing in the right manner. It was Raphael Craig who first, so to speak, came to himself. ‘As you are here, Mr. Redgrave,’ he said, ‘as you have already laid us under one obligation, perhaps you will consent to lay us under another. Perhaps you will help us to finish off these few coins. Afterwards I will beg the honour of a few words with you in private.’ It was magnificent, thought Richard, this audacious manouvre of the old man’s. It took the bull by the horns in a very determined fashion. It disarmed Richard instantly. What course, save that of complying with so calm and courteous a request, could he pursue? He divined that Raphael Craig was not a man moulded to the ordinary pattern of bank managers, ‘With pleasure,’ he replied, and thereupon the heaps of silver seemed less bizarre, less confusing, less productive of a general awkwardness. By a fiction unanimously agreed to, all three began to behave as if shovelling thousands of new silver coins at dead of night in a disused stable was a daily affair with them. Still without uttering a word, Teresa handed her galvanized iron bucket to Richard. He noticed a little uncertainty in the motion of her hand as she did so. The next moment there was a thud on the floor of the stable. Teresa had fainted. She lay extended on the stone floor. Richard ran to pick up that fair frame. He had lifted the girl’s head when the old man interposed. ‘Never raise the head of a person who has lost consciousness,’ he said coldly; ‘it is dangerous. Teresa will recover in a few minutes. This swoon is due only to the shock and strain of the last few minutes. In the meantime, will you open the door?’ Richard, having complied, stood inactive, anxious to do something, yet finding nothing to do. ‘Shall I fetch some water from the house?’ he asked. ‘Swoons are sometimes very serious if they last too long.’ ‘Are they, my friend?’ said Raphael, with the trace of a smile. ‘This one is already over--see?’ Teresa opened her eyes. ‘What are you two staring at?’ she inquired curiously, and then sighed as one fatigued. Her father raised her head in his arm and held it so for a few moments. ‘Now, my chuck,’ he said, ‘try if you can stand. Mr. Redgrave, will you assist me?’ Mr. Redgrave assisted with joy. The girl at length stood up, supported on one side by Raphael Craig and on the other by the emissary of Simon Lock. With a glance at Richard, she said she could walk. Outside stood the motor-car.