"Oh! I see," still looking at the paper, "that I receive the four hundred dollars as a gift."
"Yes, purely as a gift."
"Ah! Couldn't you put in somewhere how undeserving I am of it, and how grateful I am to get it?"
"Why, that's not necessary, Mrs. Bradley. We—we take all those things for granted, you know."
"Oh! And this says also that I release all claim for damages."
"Yes. We thought it best to put that in. You never can tell what may happen."
"I see! Don't you think that it ought also to say that I acknowledge my unworthiness and inferiority, and yield up my self-respect, and recognize my own deplorable social condition? Don't you?"
He did not reply. It was dawning on him at last that she had been trying to pierce him with shafts of ridicule. Now her manner was changing from gentle raillery into that of biting and open sarcasm. She threw the papers down on the table in front of him and backed away. She stood erect and dignified. Her eyes, widely open now, were luminous with wrath. Her lips were parted still, but not in smiles. The gleam of her white teeth was ominous. She was like a splendid leopard, not crouching, but ready to seize upon her prey. It would seem that only a fool could have been unaware of his peril. Yet Barry Malleson stood there, vaguely wondering why she should have grown suddenly sarcastic, and whether it was possible that she was about, after all, to decline the gratuity that he had offered to her. Of the fierce wrath that lay back of her piercing eyes, ready to flash in hot words from her tongue, he had no conception. Perhaps it was well that he had none. Heaven is often kind, in that way, to the mentally unfortunate.
But she was not quite ready for the leap. There was one thing to be settled first.
"Richard Malleson," she said, "has sent you with a
