Struggling to keep back her tears, and in a low voice, Mona rejoined: “I meant to have told him what I’m going to tell you now. I couldn’t say anything about the money belonging to him till I had told him how it came to be his.”
After a moment’ pause she continued: “He told you all about the race which Flamingo lost, and about that letter.” She pointed to the letter which Kitty still carried in her hand. “Well, that letter was written under the sting of bitter disappointment. I was vain. I was young. I did not understand as I do now. If you were not such good friends--of his--I could not tell you this. It seemed to me that by breaking his pledge he showed he did not care for me; that he thought he could break a sacred pledge to me, and it didn’t matter. I thought it was treating me lightly--to do it so soon after the pledge was given. I was indignant. I felt we weren’t as we might be, and I felt, too, that I must be at fault; but I was so proud that I didn’t want to admit it, I suppose, when he did give me a grievance. It was all so mixed. I was shocked at his breaking his pledge, I was so vexed that our marriage hadn’t been the success it might have been, and I think I was a little mad.”
“That is not the monopoly of only one of your sex,” interposed the Young Doctor dryly. “If I were you I wouldn’t apologise for it. You speak to a sister in like distress.”
Kitty’s eyes flamed up, but she turned her head, as though some licensed libertine of speech had had his say, and looked with friendly eyes at Mona. “Yes, yes--please go on,” she urged.
“When I wrote that letter I had forgotten what I had done the day before the race. I had gone into my husband’s room to find some things I needed from the drawer of his dressing-table; and far at the back of a drawer I found a crumpled-up roll of ten-pound notes. It was fifty pounds altogether. I took the notes--”
She paused a moment, and the room became very still. Both her listeners were sure that they were nearing a thing of deep importance.
In a lower voice Mona continued: “I don’t know what possessed me, but perhaps it was that the things he did of which I disapproved most had got a hold on me in spite of myself. I said to myself: ‘I am going to the Derby. I will take the fifty pounds, and I’ll put it on a horse for Shiel.’ He had talked so much to my brother about Flamingo, and I had seen him go wrong so often, that I had a feeling if I put it on a horse that Shiel particularly banned, it would probably win. He had been wrong nearly every time for two years. It was his money, and if it won, it would make him happy; and if it didn’t win, well, he didn’t know the money existed--I was sure of that; and, anyhow, I could replace it. I put it on a horse he condemned utterly, but of which one or two people spoke well. You know what happened to Flamingo. While at Epsom I heard from friends that Shiel was present at the race, though he had said he would not go. Later I learned that he had lost heavily. Then I saw him in the distance paying out money and giving bills to the bookmakers. It made me very angry. I don’t think I was quite sane. Most women are like that at times.”