"
Babbacombe groaned.
"And suppose, when you've seen him, you still care?"
She shook her head.
"What then, Jack? I don't know; I don't know."
He pulled himself together, and sat up.
"Do you know where he is?"
"Yes. He is at Barren Hill. He has been there for five years now. My
solicitor knows that I take an interest in him. He calls it
philanthropy." Cynthia smiled faintly into the fire. "I was one of the
people he swindled," she said. "But he paid me back."
She rose and went across the room to a bureau in a corner. She unlocked
a drawer, and took something from it. Returning, she laid a packet of
notes in Babbacombe's hands.
"I could never part with them," she said. "He gave them to me in a
sealed parcel the last time I saw him. It's only a hundred pounds. Yes,
that was the message he wrote. Can you read it? 'With apologies from the
man who swindled you.' As if I cared for the wretched money!"
Babbacombe frowned over the writing in silence.
"Why don't you say what you think, Jack?" she said. "Why don't you call
him a thieving scoundrel and me a poor, romantic fool!"
"I am trying to think how I can help you," he answered quietly. "Have
you any plans?"
"No, nothing definite," she said. "It is difficult to know what to do.
He knows one thing--that he has a friend who will help him when he comes
out. He will be horribly poor, you know, and I'm so rich.
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