“Mother, what do you mean? I do not understand you at all. What price have you been paying for sins of mine?”
“It is time you showed some curiosity on the subject.” Then, with a side glance at her husband, full of bitterness and despair, she went on: “Did you ever ask yourself where the money came from with which I paid your debts two years ago, in Paris?”
“No——that is, I supposed, of course, it came out of your own pocket. Mr. Winchester is a rich man——”
“And I, his wife, must therefore be a rich woman. Well, I may be; but even rich women do not always have a hundred thousand francs at their disposal; and that sum I gave you, and you took from me. Where do you think I obtained it? Not from him, as his face only too plainly testifies.”
“Where, then, mother——where, then? Tell me, for I——”
But Mr. Winchester had taken a step forward, and his face was very white.
“Let her answer my questions,” said he. “You gave your son, that scapegrace, a hundred thousand francs, two years ago, in Paris?”
She bowed her head, trembling with something more than wrath.
“It was a great sum,” he continued, “a great sum! I do not wonder you hesitated to ask me for it. He would never have got it, never. I wonder that you found any friend willing to throw so much money to the dogs.”
“It was not a friend,” she murmured. “O William!” she went on, with almost a pleading sound in her voice, “we have never had any children, and you do not know what it is to love a son. To see him in peril, disgrace, or necessity, and not seek to relieve him, is impossible. You must make allowances for a mother’s heart.”
“But this money——these thousands——where did they come from, where?”
She flushed, and her head drooped, but her natural haughtiness soon lifted it again. Rising, she asked, in her turn——
“Mr. Winchester, why did you send for me to-night, as I was dressing for the reception, and, after inquiring if I were going to wear my diamonds, say it was your pleasure that I should do so, and then add, that you wished to borrow them of me to-morrow as you desired to show them to a dealer?”
“Why? because——” It was his turn to flush now——“because I do wish to show them to a dealer.”
“And what has a dealer to do with my diamonds?”