"What was that man here for, then, Stephen? It's only natural I should
want to know that," said Mrs. Tadman, abashed, but not struck dumb by her
kinsman's reproof.
"What's that to you? Business. Yes, there _has_ been money pass between
us, and it's rather a profitable business for me. Perhaps it was
horse-racing, perhaps it wasn't. That's about all you've any call to
know. I've made money by it, and not lost. And now, don't let me be
bothered about it any more, if you and me are to keep friends."
"I'm sure, Stephen," Mrs. Tadman remonstrated in a feebly plaintive tone,
"I've no wish to bother you; there's nothing farther from my thoughts;
but it's only natural that I should be anxious about a place where I've
lived so many years. Not but what I could get my living easy enough
elsewhere, as you must know, Stephen, being able to turn my hand to
almost anything."
To this feeble protest Mr. Whitelaw vouchsafed no answer. He had lighted
his pipe by this time, and was smoking and staring at the fire with his
usual stolid air--meditative, it might be, or only ruminant, like one of
his own cattle.
But all through that night Mr. Whitelaw, who was not commonly a seer of
visions or dreamer of dreams, had his slumbers disturbed by some unwonted
perplexity of spirit. His wife lay broad awake, thinking of that
prolonged and piercing cry, which seemed to her, the more she meditated
upon it, in have been a cry of anguish or of terror, and could not fail
to notice this unusual disturbance of her husband's sleep.
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