"When did you find this out?" she said, very quickly."After you became administrator?"He struck the back of the chair she had vacated a vicious blow with his open hand."No, you spendthrift! All there was TO your grandfather when you buried him was a basket full of distillery stock, I tell you! Old paper! Can't you hear me?
Old paper, old rags--"
"You have sent me the same income," she lifted her voice to interrupt; "you have made the same quarterly payments since his death that you made before.If you knew, why did you do that?"He had been shouting at her with the frantic and incredulous exasperation of an intolerant man utterly unused to opposition; his face empurpled, his forehead dripping, and his hands ruthlessly pounding the back of the chair; but this straight question stripped him suddenly of gesture and left him standing limp and still before her, pale splotches beginning to show on his hot cheeks.
"If you knew, why did you do it?" she repeated.
"You wrote me that my income was from dividends, and I knew and thought nothing about it;but if the stock which came to me was worthless, how could it pay dividends?""It did not," he answered, huskily."That distillery stock, I tell you, isn't worth the matches to burn it.""But there has been no difference in my income,"she persisted, steadily."Why? Can you explain that to me?""Yes, I can," he replied, and it seemed to her that he spoke with a pallid and bitter desperation, like a man driven to the wall."I can if you think you want to know.""I do.""I sent it."
"Do you mean from you own--"
"I mean it was my own money."
She had not taken her eyes from his, which met hers straightly and angrily; and at this she leaned forward, gazing at him with profound scrutiny.
"Why did you send it?" she asked.
"Charity," he answered, after palpable hesitation.