He answered with painful hesitation. "Well--he didn't see it. My father hasn't very much imagination--he couldn't realize the thing in the same way, because he wasn't in it as I was. He'd seen nobody but Pilkington, you see." Something in her face told him that this line of defence was distasteful to her, that he had no right to make a personal matter of an abstract question of justice. It was through those personalities that he had always erred. "I don't see what that has to do with it," she said. "He--he thought it was only a question of a bargain between Pilkington and him." "What you mean is that he wouldn't admit that I came into it at all?" She saw that she was putting him to the torture. He could not defend himself without exposing his father; but she meant that he should defend himself, that he should if possible stand clear. "Yes. He hadn't seen you. He wouldn't go back on his bargain, and I couldn't make him. God knows I tried hard enough! "Did you think you could do anything by trying?" "I thought I could do a good deal. I had a hold on him, you see. I happen to be extremely useful to him in this branch of his business. I was trained for it; in fact, I'm hopelessly mixed up with it. Well, he can't do very much without me, and I told him that if he didn't give up the library I should give him up. It wasn't a nice thing to have to say to your father--" "And you said it?" Her face expressed both admiration and a certain horror. "Yes. I told him he must choose between me and his bargain." "That must have been hard." "He didn't seem to find it so. Anyhow, he hasn't chosen me." "I meant hard for you to have to say it." "I assure you it came uncommonly easy at the moment." "Don't--don't." "I'm not going to defend him simply because he happens to be my father. I don't even defend myself." "You? You didn't know." "I knew quite enough. I knew he might cheat you without meaning to. I didn't think he'd do it so soon or so infamously, but, to tell the truth, I went up to town on purpose to prevent it." "I know--I know that was what you went for." She seemed to be answering some incessant voice that accused him, and he perceived that the precipitancy of his action suggested a very different interpretation. His position was odious enough in all conscience, but as yet it had not occurred to him that he could be suspected of complicity in the actual fraud. "Why didn't I do something to prevent it before?" "But--didn't you?" "I did everything I could. I wrote to my father--if that's anything; the result, as you see, was a cheque for the two hundred that should have been three thousand." "Did it never occur to you to write to anybody else, to Mr. Jewdwine, for instance?" She brought out the question shrinkingly, as if urged against her will by some intolerable compulsion, and he judged that this time they had touched what was, for her, a vital point. "Of course it occurred to me. Haven't you heard from him?"