"Which _you_ assume that she must, and I am as confident that she will
not."

Stocmar made an impertinent gesture at this, which Paten, quickly
perceiving, resented, by asking, in a tone of almost insult, "What do
you mean? Is it so very self-evident that a woman must reject me? Is
that your meaning?"

"Any woman that ever lived would reject the man who pursues her with
a menace. So long as you presume to wield an influence over her by a
threat, your case must be hopeless."

"These are stage and behind-scene notions,--they never were gleaned
from real life. Your theatrical women have little to lose, and it can't
signify much to them whether a story more or less attach to their names.
Threats of exposure would certainly affright them little; but your
woman living in the world, holding her head amongst other women,
criticising their dress, style, and manner,--think of _her_ on the day
that the town gets hold of a scandal about her! Do you mean to tell
_me_ there's any price too high to pay for silencing it?"

"What would you really take for those letters of hers, if she were
disposed to treat for them?"

"I offered them once to old Nick Holmes for two thousand pounds. I 'd
not accept that sum now."

"But where or how could she command such an amount?"

"That 's no affair of mine. I have an article in the market, and I 'm
not bound to trouble myself as to the straits of the purchaser. Look
here, Hyman Stocmar," said he, changing his voice to a lower tone, while
he laid his hand on the other's arm,--"look here. You think me very
vindictive and very malignant in all this, but if you only knew with
what insults she has galled me, what cruel slights she has passed upon
me, you 'd pity rather than condemn me. If she would have permitted
me to see and speak to her,--if I could only be able to appeal to her
myself,--I don't think it would be in vain; and, if I know anything
of myself, I could swear I 'd bear up with the crudest thing she could
utter to me, rather than these open outrages that come conveyed through
others."

"And if that failed, would you engage to restore her letters?--for
some possible sum, I mean, for you know well two thousand is out of
the question. She told me she could command some six or seven hundred
pounds. She said so, believing that I really came to treat with her on
the subject."

Paten shook his head dissentingly, but was silent. At last he said: "She
must have much more than this at her