"Then it has all been a plan from the beginning!" cried Loree, in bitter indignation. "A plan to corrupt and ensnare me!"

"But you were so very willing to be corrupted and ensnared," retorted Valeria Cork. "If you had been honest and come to me that night, as was evidently your first intention, we might have stood together and fought him. But you did not. And in the morning, when I came round, still wretchedly hoping for some way out for us both--you were there, happy and smiling, making a silk bag for your _pink topaz_!" The red blood of shame rushed through Loree Temple's face, but the elder woman spared her nothing. "You lied to me and told me how old and ugly I looked. I must say your att.i.tude did not invite sacrifice, and the burning of my own hands. I read you--empty, vain, faithless, utterly despicable."

Loree was now white as death, but the other woman's scorn brought a blaze to her eyes.

"It does not come too well from you--that indictment," she retorted bitterly.

"Perhaps not. I am a thief, too. But I stole for a keener need, and a greater cause, if that can be any excuse for crime. I wanted money, not for myself but to ensure the continuation of my boy's education. In a moment of terrible temptation to steal a stone and realise a few hundred pounds, I succ.u.mbed. Within a few moments I repented and would have put it back, but it was too late to do so without being observed, and my next idea, to return it anonymously, was thwarted by the fact that Quelch and the detectives had all seen. You, on the other hand, had time to think temptation over and reason with your own soul. And what was _your_ pressing need that made you ready and willing to barter away the honour of a man like that,"--she pointed to the photograph on the table--"for--diamonds?"

That blanched Loraine Loree, and withered and crushed her.

"Oh, no--no!" she moaned brokenly. "Not Pat's honour! Don't think that! I love my husband with all my heart and soul. But I never gave a thought to what I was doing. From the moment I saw diamonds, they seemed to put a spell on me, something that blotted out my mind and conscience. I can't explain to you--but _now_ I see what I have done-- destroyed his happiness, his pride in life--everything! O G.o.d, what shall I do?"

It was clear that at last she was at grips with something greater than self love and vanity, had forgotten, in the suffering she must inflict on her husband, the danger that menaced herself. Even Valeria Cork's tormented soul, wrung dry by its own sorrow, felt compa.s.sion for the weeping, desolate girl, so young and so foolish.

"You must pick up the pieces and begin again," she said sombrely, "and consider yourself lucky if you are able to. A second chance does not come to us all."

"What second chance am I likely to have?" said Loree tragically. "None.

He has me in a trap that I cannot escape from without shame."

"I could help you if you were worth it," said Mrs Cork cryptically.

The girl could only look at her with agonised eyes. She knew she had proved herself unworthy of help on this woman's part, but she thought of Pat, and her glance was entreating.

"No woman has ever helped me," stated Valeria Cork. "A woman stole my husband and destroyed my happiness. In all my goings up and down, and struggles to live uprightly, women have kicked me and wiped their boots on me." What gleam of hope she had felt left Loree's heart, but came back at Valeria's next words: "That is no reason why I should be as base as they. And, at the last, you have shown me that a woman _can_ be kind to another. I will tell you truthfully that your action in bringing that fifty pound note is the first disinterestedly generous thing a woman has ever done for me."

Poor Loree's face drooped in shame.

"It was not altogether disinterested," she confessed. "I--I did think, as you divined, that it might also be a way of getting even with my conscience for keeping the diamonds--"

"Ah!"

"Still, I _did_ want to give you a helping hand if you would let me. I liked you awfully, and was so dreadfully sorry--"

"_So_ you said in your letter."

"You can believe or not--I don't care. What does anything matter if he does what he swears--that rather than let me go, he will bring my reputation to the dust? That means publishing to the world that I--Pat Temple's wife--took the De Beers diamond!"

"But you did not."

"Well, I kept it when I found it. That is as bad--and worse--as you have shown me."

"Only that it didn't happen to belong to De Beers," said Valeria Cork.

She picked it up from where it lay in its silk bag, discarded in company with the now despised and rejected necklace. "This diamond is an almost exact facsimile of the rose diamond you so much admired at De Beers', but it happens to have come, years ago, from the Tintara mine and to be Heseltine Quelch's own property. He took advantage of the likeness to make you believe that it was the De Beers stone you had, when it was simply his own that he wished you to keep."

"Then--then," cried Loree, "I am _not_ a public criminal? De Beers cannot arrest me? No one but Heseltine Quelch can threaten me with disgrace?"

"No," answered Valeria calmly; "it is rally I who can be arrested and disgraced, and I don't suppose he will spare me when he finds you have slipped his clutches."

Loree gave a long sigh.

"I cannot slip his clutches--at your expense," she said at last.

"You have your husband to think of."

The girl shook her head.

"You don't know Pat. He would never let himself be saved anything at the expense of another, especially a woman."

"He must never know that part of the story," said Valeria firmly.

"But, Mrs Cork, I cannot! I feel it in my bones that Quelch will wreak vengeance on some one, and I cannot let you be sacrificed. You have got to think of yourself. Your boy, too--for whom--"

"For whom I stole," supplemented Valeria. "Ah, my dear, _you_ tell me to think of him! For the last two days I have thought of nothing else.

He has lain in my arms, a little chubby baby once more, with his curly head against my breast."

"He shall never be sacrificed!" cried Loree.

"He is sacrificed already," said Valeria Cork softly, "by a more just fate than you or I control. He was drowned two days ago while trying to save the life of a friend."

"O dear G.o.d!" whispered Loree pitifully. Now she knew the reason of the other's sombre, tearless gaze. Nothing could ever hurt more deeply or comfort again that soul bereft.

"So you see," said Valeria, voicing her thought, "nothing matters."

She talked down Loree's protests. She was bent on sacrifice as her just punishment. Almost it seemed as if she craved some other pain as anodyne for that which already ate like a rat at her heart. They talked into the small hours of the morning, formulating plans by which to defeat Quelch, who, they knew, would stick at nothing.

"He told me frankly," said Valeria, "that there were only two things in the world he cared about--the future of his son and the possession of you. That was in the small hours after the ball when he had just paid down 50,000 pounds to keep scandal from touching you."

"50,000 pounds! What can you mean?"

"Ah yes, I had forgotten for the moment. That was the price he paid Mrs Solano for the necklace. It was hers as she rightly claimed. As soon as she got it into her hands in Quelch's sitting-room she was able to prove that to him."

"Hers? But how then had he got it to give to me?"

"It is a complicated story, and full of dark by-ways. G.o.d knows what evil magic lies in diamonds that they can make people do such terrible things! It appears that Mrs Solano had given the chain into the care of her banker. She wanted him to sell it, but she set a very high price on it and he had never been able to find a purchaser. However, one day recently when Quelch was with him at the bank he produced it, and Quelch, with you in his mind, and recognising it as a most exquisite collection of stones, offered twenty-five thousand pounds for it. The Banker closed at once without disclosing to Quelch the name of the client for whom he was selling. And in fact he never disclosed the transaction to Mrs Solano herself. His bank was in deep waters and he used the money to tide over his own financial difficulties, no doubt intending and hoping to repay the money before she should find out about the sale of the chain. Unfortunately you wore it that night. She saw it and the moment she and Quelch were alone and compared notes they realised what had happened."

At the words "financial difficulties" a dreadful suspicion that had been lurking in Loree Temple's brain, found words.

"What was the Banker's name?" she asked hoa.r.s.ely, and even as she feared the answer was:

"Frederick Huffe."

"O G.o.d!" with a moan the girl covered her eyes. "I felt sure it was. I had a horrible feeling that there was some connection between the diamonds and his death, for I remember that it was to speak to Mr Quelch that he was called away from dancing with me."

"Yes, Quelch sent for him, and there in the sitting-room they questioned him point blank, and he calmly admitted what he had done and that he had used the money. Nothing more was said. Quelch had told me since that neither he nor Mrs Solano would have dreamed of prosecuting. They both liked the man too much and appreciated that his difficulties had not been his own but of the bank's making. Probably Quelch would have helped him out. But poor Freddy Huffe's pride was broken. He went straight from them into the garden and shot himself with a revolver he always carried."

Loree shuddered.