“It’s I that ought to ask you that question.”

The accuser was exasperated.

“A couple o’ years in quod will be about your mark, I’m thinking,” he said.

Whereupon Louis was suddenly inspired to answer: 

“Yes.  And supposing I was to begin to talk about illicit commissions?”

Horrocleave jumped up with such ferocious violence that Louis drew back, startled.  The recent Act of Parliament, making a crime of secret commissions to customers’ employees, had been a blow to the trade in art-lustre ware, and it was no secret in the inner office that Horrocleave, resenting its interference with the natural course of business, had more than once discreetly flouted it, and thus technically transgressed the criminal law.  Horrocleave used to defend and justify himself by the use of that word “technical.”  Louis’ polite and unpremeditated threat enraged him to an extreme degree.  He was the savage infuriate.  He cared for no consequences, even consequences to himself.  He hated Louis because Louis was spick and span, and quiet, and because Louis had been palmed off on him by Louis’ unscrupulous respectable relatives as an honest man.

“Now thou’st done for thyself!” he cried, in the dialect.  “Thou’st done for thyself!  And I’ll have thee by the heels for embezzlement, and blackmail as well.”  He waved his arms.  “May God strike me if I give thee any quarter after that!  I’ll—­”

He stopped with open mouth, disturbed by the perception of a highly strange phenomenon beyond the window.  He looked and saw Rachel in the yard.  For a moment he thought that Louis had planned to use his wife as a shield in the affair if the worst should come to the worst.  But Rachel’s appearance simultaneously showed him that he was wrong.  She was the very mirror of happy confidence.  And she seemed so young, and so obviously just married; and so girlish and so womanish at the same time; and her frock was so fresh, and her hat so pert against the heavy disorder of the yard, and her eyes were unconsciously so wistful—­that Horrocleave caught his breath.  He contrasted Rachel with Mrs. Horrocleave, her complete antithesis, and at once felt very sorry for himself and very scornful of Mrs. Horrocleave, and melting with worshipful sympathy for Rachel.

“Yer wife’s in the yard,” he whispered in a different tone.

“My wife!” Louis was gravely alarmed; all his manner altered.

“Hast told her anything of this?”

“I should think I hadn’t.”

“Ye must pay me, and I’ll give ye notice to leave,” said Horrocleave, quickly, in a queer, quiet voice.  The wrath was driven out of him.  The mere apparition of Rachel had saved her husband.

A silence.

Rachel had disappeared.  Then there was a distant tapping.  Neither of the men spoke nor moved.  They could hear the outer door open and light footfalls in the outer office.

“Anybody here?” It was Rachel’s voice, timid.