Her silence
had been heavily and efficiently bought for fifteen years. Then steps
had been taken--insisted upon--by Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton. His wife and his
sister-in-law had opposed him in vain. And Ralph had after all triumphed
in Judith's apparent acquiescence.
Supposing she had now come home, perhaps on a sudden impulse, with a view
to further blackmail, would not her wisest move be to risk some
indiscretion, some partial disclosure, so that her renewed silence
afterward might have the higher price? An hour's _tete-a-tete_ with
that shrewd, hard-souled man, Henry Barron! Alice Puttenham guessed that
her own long-established dislike of him as acquaintance and neighbour was
probably returned with interest; that he classed her now as one of
"Meynell's lot," and would be only too glad to find himself possessed of
any secret information that might, through her, annoy and harass Richard
Meynell, her friend and counsellor.
Was it conceivable that nothing should have been said in that lengthy
interview as to the causes for Judith's coming home?--or of the reasons
for her original departure? What else could have accounted for so
prolonged a conversation between two persons, so different in social
grade, and absolute strangers to each other?
Richard had told her, indeed, and she saw from the _Post_, that at the
inquest Barron had apparently accounted for the conversation.
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