"Yes," he said, "I will tell you if you want to know. There has been a big scheme on hand for some time,--there are men who must be influenced; I am one of them, and people say that the greater part of the work is carried on in your parlors here, and that you were set on me because you were a clever little manoeuvrer, and knew your business better than I should be likely to suspect. That is what they say, and that is what I must believe, because"-- He stopped short. He had drawn nearer the mantel-piece, and as he spoke some object lying upon it caught his eye. It was the letter directed to himself, lying with the address upward, and he took it in his hand. "What is this?" he demanded. "Who left it here?" Bertha stood perfectly motionless. Richard's words came back to her: "Give it to him if he is in a good humor. It contains arguments which I think will convince him." Then she looked at Blundel's face. If there could be any moment more unfit than another for the presentation of arguments it was this particular one. And never before had she liked him so well or valued his good opinion so highly as she did now, when he turned his common, angry, honest face upon her. "What is it?" he said again. "Tell me." She thought of Richard once more, and then of the children sleeping upstairs, and of the quiet, innocent day she had spent with them. They did not know that she was an intriguing woman, whom people talked of; she had never realized it herself to the full until this moment. They had delicately forborne giving any name to the thing she had done; but this man, who judged matters in a straightforward fashion, would find a name for it. But there was only one answer for her to make. "It is a letter I was to give you," she said. "And it is from your husband?" "I have not read it," she replied. He stopped short a moment and looked at her--with a sudden suggestion of doubt and bewilderment that was as bad as a blow. "Look here!" he said. "You were going to give it to me,--you intended to do it." "Yes." He gave her another look,--amazement, anger, disbelief, struggling with each other in it,--and then thrust his obstinate fists into his pockets again and planted himself before her like a rock. "By the Lord!" he said. "I won't believe it!" The hard common-sense which had been his stronghold and the stand-by of his constituents for many a year came to his rescue. He might not know much of women; but he had seen intrigue, and trickery, and detected guilt, and it struck him if these things were here, they were before him in a new form. "Now," he said, "tell me who gave it to you." "You will know that," she answered, "when you read it." "Tell me," he demanded, "if you know what is in it." "I know something," she replied, "of what is in it." "By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I'd give a great deal to know how much." Only Richard could have told him how much or how little, and he was not there.