My remark excited her greatly, and, glaring at me with positive ferociousness, she exclaimed—
“You don’t know me, you fool, or you wouldn’t talk like that! Not twenty hundred pounds would make me betray my own flesh and blood. Now, then, put that in your pipe and smoke it, and then cut your stick as soon as you like. I don’t want you here.”
She could not have played into my hands better than she did. I needed no second intimation, but telling her that I thought she was treating me very badly, I took my departure; and now more than ever I felt I was on Billy the Bagman’s track, and I should have been disposed then to have pledged myself that I would run him down.
During the short time I had been with Mrs. Syme I had gradually worked out a theory as she revealed her true character, and th
