The next day, after much thought, he took a decision and, believing it to
be just, immediately acted on it. He cornered Mr. and Mrs. Moreen again
and let them know that if on the spot they didn't pay him all they owed
him he wouldn't only leave their house but would tell Morgan exactly what
had brought him to it.
"Oh you _haven't_ told him?" cried Mrs. Moreen with a pacifying hand on
her well-dressed bosom.
"Without warning you? For what do you take me?" the young man returned.
Mr. and Mrs. Moreen looked at each other; he could see that they
appreciated, as tending to their security, his superstition of delicacy,
and yet that there was a certain alarm in their relief. "My dear
fellow," Mr. Moreen demanded, "what use can you have, leading the quiet
life we all do, for such a lot of money?"--a question to which Pemberton
made no answer, occupied as he was in noting that what passed in the mind
of his patrons was something like: "Oh then, if we've felt that the
child, dear little angel, has judged us and how he regards us, and we
haven't been betrayed, he must have guessed--and in short it's
_general_!" an inference that rather stirred up Mr.
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