Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/498

Rh willing to begin again as an interne or a doctor’s assistant.

“I have never reminded you of what you owe me, and I should not do so now if I hadn’t been to hell and back since I saw you. But I suppose you would rather have me remind you than apply to Mr. Amherst. You can tell me when to call for my answer.”

Justine laid down the letter and looked up. Her eyes rested on her own reﬂection in the glass, and it frightened her. She sat motionless, with a thickly-beating heart, one hand clenched on the letter.

“I suppose you would rather have me remind you than apply to Mr. Amherst.”

That was what his importunity meant, then! She had been paying blackmail all this time.… Somewhere, from the ﬁrst, in an obscure fold of consciousness, she had felt the stir of an unnamed, unacknowledged fear; and now the fear raised its head and looked at her. “Well! She would look back at it, then: look it straight in the malignant eye. “What was it, after all, but a “bugbear to scare children”—the ghost of the opinion of the many? She had suspected from the ﬁrst that \Vyant knew of her having shortened the term of Bessy Amherst’s sufferings—returning to the room when he did, it was almost impossible that he should not have guessed what had happened; and his silence had made her believe that he understood her motive [ 482 ]