“Very good. You can take these medals. I should be glad if you would
begin at this end. I suppose they will all be the same value when melted
down, but these are the ones which are the rarest, and, therefore, the
most precious to him. It is not necessary to break the locks. If you
press that brass knob you will find that there is a secret spring. So! Take that small one first—it is the very apple of his eye.”

She had opened one of the cases, and the beautiful things all lay
exposed before me. I had my hand upon the one which she had pointed out,
when suddenly a change came over her face, and she held up one finger as
a warning. “Hist!” she whispered. “What is that?”

Far away in the silence of the house we heard a low, dragging, shuffling
sound, and the distant tread of feet. She closed and fastened the case
in an instant. “It’s my husband!” she whispered. “All right. Don’t be alarmed. I’ll
arrange it. Here! Quick, behind the tapestry!”

She pushed me behind the painted curtains upon the wall, my empty
leather bag still in my hand. Then she took her taper and walked quickly
into the room from which we had come. From where I stood I could see her
through the open door. “Is that you, Robert?” she cried. The light of a candle shone through the door of the museum, and the
shuffling steps came nearer and nearer. Then I saw a face in the
doorway, a great, heavy face, all lines and creases, with a huge curving
nose, and a pair of gold glasses fixed across it. He had to throw his
head back to see through the glasses, and that great nose thrust out in
front of him like the beak of some sort of fowl. He was a big man, very
tall and burly, so that in his loose dressing-gown his figure seemed to
fill up the whole doorway. He had a pile of grey, curling hair all round
his head, but his face was clean-shaven. His mouth was thin and small
and prim, hidden away under his long, masterful nose. He stood there,
holding the candle in front of him, and looking at his wife with a
queer, malicious gleam in his eyes. It only needed that one look to tell
me that he was as fond of her as she was of him. “How’s this?” he asked. “Some new tantrum? What do you mean by wandering
about the house? Why don’t you go to bed?”

“I could not sleep,” she answered. She spoke languidly and wearily. If
she was an actress once, she had not forgotten her calling. “Might I suggest,” said he, in the same mocking kind of voice, “that a
good conscience is an excellent aid to sleep?”

“That cannot be true,” she answered, “for you sleep very well.”

“I have only one thing in my life to be ashamed of,” said he, and his
hair bristled up with anger until he looked like an old cockatoo. “You
know best what that is. It is a mistake which has brought its own
punishment with it.”

“To me as well as to you. Remember that!”

“You have very little to whine about. It was I who stooped and you who
rose.”

“Rose!”

“Yes, rose. I suppose you do not deny that it is promotion to exchange
the music-hall for Mannering Hall. Fool that I was ever to take you out
of your true sphere!”

“If you think so, why do you not separate?”

“Because private misery is better than public humiliation. Because it is
easier to suffer for a mistake than to own to it. Because also I like to
keep you in my sight, and to know that you cannot go back to him.”

“You villain! You cowardly villain!”

“Yes, yes, my lady. I know your secret ambition, but it shall never be
while I live, and if it happens after my death I will at least take care
that you go to him as a beggar. You and dear Edward will never have the
satisfaction of squandering my savings, and you may make up your mind to
that, my lady. Why are those shutters and the window open?”

“I found the night very close.”

“It is not safe. How do you know that some tramp may not be outside? Are
you aware that my collection of medals is worth more than any similar
collection in the world? You have left the door open also. What is there
to prevent any one from rifling the cases?”

“I was here.”

“I know you were. I heard you moving about in the medal room, and that
was why I came down. What were you doing?”

“Looking at the medals. What else should I be doing?”

“This curiosity is something new.” He looked suspiciously at her and
moved on towards the inner room, she walking beside him. It was at this moment that I saw something which startled me. I had laid
my clasp-knife open upon the top of one of the cases, and there it lay
in full view. She saw it before he did, and with a woman’s cunning she
held her taper out so that the light of it came between Lord Mannering’s
eyes and the knife. Then she took it in her left hand and held it
against her gown out of his sight. He looked about from case to case—I
could have put my hand at one time upon his long nose—but there was
nothing to show that the medals had been tampered with, and so, still
snarling and grumbling, he shuffled off into the other room once more. And now I have to speak of what I heard rather than of what I saw, but I
swear to you, as I shall stand some day before my Maker, that what I say
is the truth. When they passed into the outer room I saw him lay his candle upon the
corner of one of the tables, and he sat himself down, but in such a
position that he was just out of my sight. She moved behind him, as I
could tell from the fact that the light of her taper threw his long,
lumpy shadow upon the floor in front of him. Then he began talking about
this man whom he called Edward, and every word that he said was like a
blistering drop of vitriol. He spoke low, so that I could not hear it
all, but from what I heard I should guess that she would as soon have
been lashed with a whip. At first she said some hot words in reply, but
then she was silent, and he went on and on in that cold, mocking voice
of his, nagging and insulting and tormenting, until I wondered that she
could bear to stand there in silence and listen to it. Then suddenly I
heard him say in a sharp voice, “Come from behind me! Leave go of my
collar! What! would you dare to strike me?” There was a sound like a
blow, just a soft sort of thud, and then I heard him cry out, “My God,
it’s blood!” He shuffled with his feet as if he was getting up, and then
I heard another blow, and he cried out, “Oh, you she-devil!” and was
quiet, except for a dripping and splashing upon the floor. I ran out from behind my curtain at that, and rushed into the other
room, shaking all over with the horror of it. The old man had slipped
down in the chair, and his dressing-gown had rucked up until he looked
as if he had a monstrous hump to his back. His head, with the gold
glasses still fixed on his nose, was lolling over upon one side, and his
little mouth was open just like a dead fish. I could not see where the
blood was coming from, but I could still hear it drumming upon the
floor. She stood behind him with the candle shining full upon her face.