"Should advise you to drop that! If it comes to who's the criminal there's not much to choose between us anyway. How about thieving, eh?--who stole old Barton's will? Oh, I know all about _you_, my lady. Why, Shorty saw you do the whole trick." "I think not," she answered. She had herself well in hand again now. "I fancy you'll find it was Mrs. Darrow he saw." "Not a bit of it. He saw _you_ right enough. That was all kid his yarn to the Major to squeeze a fiver out of him." "I have no wish to hear any details of you and your associates' abominable blackmailing schemes. Anything I have done I am not ashamed of. At all events you are the last man who has a right to taunt me with it." "I don't want to taunt you," he replied, changing his tone. "There's nothing of the saint about me I know. What we are, we are: we're much of a muchness, I suppose." "I should be sorry if it were so," she said. "However, the less said between you and me the better. We are long past words. Wait here and I will bring you the money, and I trust you will go to some other country and remain there. It is not too late even now for you to make at all events an independence for yourself." When she had left the room he ran over the position in his mind. She seemed in no way surprised at, and not to care in the least for, what he had told her. He was very much afraid that dodge would not work. She knew the Major, too, and the Major certainly knew him, and altogether he came to the conclusion that this was a case where a little oil was likely to be more efficacious than a large amount of force. "All right," he said, as she returned with the notes. "I'll go, as you're so mighty anxious to get rid of me. But if I do make another pile you'll be sorry. And take my advice, Miriam, and don't get trying your hand at 'light-finger' work, or you mayn't come off so well next time, and then you mustn't expect any help from me, you know." "Leave the house, you brute," she cried, losing all control of herself for the moment, "or I'll send this moment for Major Dundas, and hand you over to him." "What do I care for you and your bully?" he retorted, laughing somewhat uneasily. But he put on his dilapidated hat, nevertheless, and swaggered out into the hall. In the street the meaning of her words came back upon him with even greater force, and with all the speed he was capable of he made for Mother Mandarin's--the only hole in the vast city where he felt secure. Left alone Miriam shed a few tears. In truth it seemed she was the very sport of Fortune. Was it never to end--this torment of her life? She hungered so for love and peace. All through she had striven to do right, to benefit in every way those around her, and how had she fared? The words of Queen Mary came to her mind:-- "Mother of God, Thou knowest woman never meant so well Or fared so ill in this disastrous world."