“No; like a man of sense he was glad to get his money and asked no questions whence it came. Here is his receipt.” He held it before her, but he did not let it go out of his hands. She saw that Beaumont had received of William Massarene, on behalf of the Duchess of Otterbourne, the sum of three hundred thousand francs _plus_ interest. A painful flush rose over her face as she saw that, and she realized more distinctly what she had done. “How can I ever repay you?” she murmured. William Massarene’s thin tight-shut lips smiled, not agreeably. He put the receipt back in his breast-pocket. “And my signature?” she said timidly, the first time in all her life that timidity had ever assailed her. Then he smiled outright. “I ain’t Billy the scorned no more, am I, my dear? Where’s your cheek, my lady?” Mouse, bending over the tiara which she was building up, turned sick at his tone. She dared not resent it. She was vaguely but intensely alarmed, and she was aware that this man, so long her butt and jest, was her master. He sat with his hands still on his knees and with a horrible leer on his dull eyes, gazing at her as a fox might look at a silver pheasant from which nothing divided him. He had always succeeded in everything, and now he had succeeded in getting _quid pro quo_ for all he had endured and expended for her. As far as his sluggish passions could be aroused they were excited for her; she had aroused in him one of those passions of mature years which are more slow yet more brutal than those of youth. But stronger still than this was his grim pleasure in her humiliation, in her silence, in her subserviency. And what a fool she was, despite all her fine airs, and cool wit, and sovereign disdain! He continued to gaze at her fixedly, the veins swelling like cords on his forehead, his stertorous breath as loud as the gasp of an engine, his small grey eyes grown red and shining luridly. “My signature?” she repeated in an unsteady voice. “You’ve got the jewels, my beauty. You can’t have no more.” “Then it is not generosity!” said Mouse passionately, and very unwarily betraying her unfounded hopes. “No, my dear,” he answered, “I never said ’twas.” Then he put his two big knotted yellow hands one on each knee, and looked at her mercilessly. “Think I’ll take my payment now, or else the di’monds,” he said, with a vile chuckle. She felt his odious grasp on her bare arms and his loathsome breath on her cheek. “Don’t cry out, my beauty, or you’ll lose your di’monds,” he said, with his lips on her shell-like ear. “You’ve got to be fond of Billy now!” CHAPTER XXVI.