"There, that will do," he said. "You understand now why you must hold your tongue." It was as if once more she had snatched at the veil and thrust it over her eyes, to gaze at him in the old, old way, as if it were impossible to give up the faith to which she had clung for so many years. "No," she said softly, "I cannot. Some things are too hard to understand, and this is one." "Then I'll make you understand," he said, almost fiercely. "If another word is uttered about this it will go like wildfire. Some meddling fool in the Government service will take it up; everything will be seized, and I shall be sent back to the gang through you. Do you hear? through you!" She stood now gazing at him with her eyes contracting. Her lips parted several times as if she were about to speak, and as if her brain were striving, indeed, to comprehend this thing that she had declared to be too hard. At last she spoke. "You shall say," she cried hoarsely. "Tell me what it was I brought over to you." "What, again!" he cried. "Well, then, what I had saved up for the rainy day that I knew was coming. My fortune, that I have been waiting all these years to spend; notes that would change at any time; diamonds that would always fetch their price. You did not guess all this? You did not see through it all? Bah! I'm sick of this miserable mock sentiment and twaddle about innocence!" She drew her breath hard. "I had to fight the world when I was unlucky in my speculations, and the world got me down. Now my turn has come, and I can laugh at the world. Let's have no more fooling. You have understood it all from the beginning, and have played your part well. Let me play mine in peace." An angry reply rose to her lips, but it died away, and she caught at his hand. "It is true, then?" she whispered. "True? Yes, of course," he said brutally. "That money, then? Robert, husband, it is not ours. You will give it up--everything?" "Give it up!" he said, laughing. "Not a shilling. They hounded me down most cruelly!" "For the sake of our old love, Robert," she whispered, as she clung to him. "Let us begin again, and I will work for you. Let us try, in a future of toil, to wash away this clinging disgrace. My husband, my husband! for the sake of our innocent child!" "Give up what I have!" he cried. "Now that I have schemed till success is mine! Not a shilling if it were to save old Sir Gordon's life." "But, Robert, for the sake of our child. I am your wife, and I will bear this blow; but let her go on believing in him whom I have taught her to love. Let the past be dead; begin a new life--repentance for that which has gone. Robert, my husband, I have loved you so dearly, and so long."