"Is it as bad as that?" Beatrice whispered.
"I can see no difference," Wilfrid said wearily. "If it were myself alone it would not matter. My household might be wrecked and everything taken away from me with impunity, because I have health and strength and would smile at the scandals of a place like Oldborough. But for the last four or five years I have promised my mother that I would settle down on shore and be near her in her old age. But why worry you with all this? Why should I picture her delight and pleasure in the new home she has to look after, which she regards merely as the beginning of my prosperity? And now I must go home to-night and tell her the bitter truth. I shall have to let her know that I have been deceiving her from the first, and that my so-called home is really the property of strangers. A few moments ago I had it in my power to secure that home. I had only to take a certain piece of paper and drop it in the fire and there would have been an end of the matter."
"That was when I came in," Beatrice whispered.
She was interested in spite of herself. She began to see there might be something in Wilfrid's point of view, and it was really dreadful that a rich man like Samuel Flower should stoop to crush another who was powerless to help himself. Indignation was warming Beatrice's blood. To her it almost seemed that Wilfrid would have been justified in his action. She turned towards him eagerly.
"But, surely, something can be done," she said. "I blame myself for not having seen your mother. If you will remember I promised to call upon her, but, really, there has been very little opportunity. Perhaps when we get back to Oldborough----"
"You forget that there will be no Oldborough for me after to-day," Wilfrid said quietly. "I am going to see this thing through to the bitter end, and your uncle and his tool, Cotter, can do what they please. Well, what is it?"
Wilfrid turned impatiently as a maid-servant came into the dining-room. The girl seemed to be distressed.
"Please, sir, it's the nurse," she said. "She doesn't seem at all well. She asked me to see if you had gone. Perhaps you wouldn't mind going upstairs again."
Though unwillingly, Wilfrid went back to the bedroom where Flower was lying. A regular conspiracy of circumstances had combined to keep him in that dreadful house. He found the nurse standing at the foot of the bed gazing at her patient with a white face and tearful eyes. Flower was sitting up now glaring about him and muttering strange things.