Page 641 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

money, Jack, but I’ve got you!’
‘You have been clever in finding me out; I give you credit
for that.’
‘There is not a single act of your life, John Rex, that I do
not know,’ she continued, with heat. ‘I have traced you from
the day you stole out of my house until now. I know your
continental trips, your journeyings here and there in search
of a lost clue. I pieced together the puzzle, as you have done,
and I know that, by some foul fortune, you have stolen the
secret of a dead man to ruin an innocent and virtuous fam-
ily.’
‘Hullo! hullo!’ said John Rex. ‘Since when have you learnt
to talk of virtue?’
‘It is well to taunt, but you have got to the end of your
tether now, Jack. I have communicated with the woman
whose son’s fortune you have stolen. I expect to hear from
Lady Devine in a day or so.’
‘Well—and when you hear?’
‘I shall give back the fortune at the price of her silence!’
‘Ho! ho! Will you?’
‘Yes; and if my husband does not come back and live with
me quietly, I shall call the police.’
John Rex sprang up. ‘Who will believe you, idiot?’ he
cried. ‘I’ll have you sent to gaol as an impostor.’
‘You forget, my dear,’ she returned, playing coquettishly
with her rings, and glancing sideways as she spoke, ‘that
you have already acknowledged me as your wife before the
landlord and the servants. It is too late for that sort of thing.
Oh, my dear Jack, you think you are very clever, but I am as

0 For the Term of His Natural Life