But his effrontery, instead of succeeding with her, made her angry. Looking him steadily in the face, she said, her eyes flashing the steely fire that only blue eyes can show: “You may be able to forgive me, Mr. Rotherfield, but it’s too late to ask me to forgive _you_.” For a moment he was confounded, but he quickly recovered himself. “What do you mean?” he said. “Must I say it? Remember, I shall have a good deal to say,” said she, below her breath. He cast at her a look which frightened her, so full of undisguised malice was it. “Say it and let us have it out,” he said defiantly. “Well, you stole the picture; you were taking it up to town--to sell. And it was you, no doubt, who robbed Sir Robert of his snuff-boxes also. There is no injustice in taking that for granted.” “Indeed! Now _I_ should have thought there was the cruellest injustice in accusing any man of a theft which you couldn’t prove up to the hilt.” “Very well. We will leave out the matter of the snuff-boxes then. You can’t deny that you stole the picture.” “I do deny it. If I had a hand in it, you know for whom it was done. You know whose extravagance has to be paid for, somehow or other; and that a man, placed in such a position as I, is forced to choose between betraying one of his friends or the other. I stood by the woman. What else could I do?” Rhoda was aghast at the effrontery of this confession. There might be some truth in it, though she could not but think that his extravagance was quite as likely to have led up to the robbery as that of Lady Sarah. In any case, his excuse was, of course, thoroughly bad. “You presume to tell me you were in the right in helping a wife to rob her husband!” she cried. “In the circumstances, what else could I do?” “Anything else, of course,” Rhoda retorted contemptuously. “Sir Robert is the most generous man in the world.” Jack raised his eyebrows. “Oh, have you found him so?” sneered he. Rhoda grew red, but did not affect to notice the sneer. “He is quite unable to deny his wife anything she asks for. If she had gone to him with a full statement of the amount she wanted, he would have given it to her at once.” “Your experience of him, unfortunately, scarcely tallies with that of his wife,” said Jack coolly. “She begged him to let her have some money, and he refused.” “I don’t believe it. At least he would ask her for the amount of her debts and then undertake to pay them.” “And is that what you call confidence, generosity. To treat her like a child, to make her give an account of every penny?” It struck Rhoda forcibly, as she listened to this indictment of the baronet, that Jack had been trying to get money for his own expenses out of his late guardian by means of Lady Sarah: it was a shrewd guess, and Jack saw what was in her mind.