where?"

The question leaped from him with such fierceness, that I jumped up again as if in alarm. "Oh, Colonel Katona, how you frighten me!"

"No, no, I don't wish to frighten you. But this is everything to me. Twelve months ago she disappeared from Tyrnau, Miss Gilmore, lured away as I believe by some scoundrel; and I have never seen or heard of her from that time. You have seen her since, you say--and you must tell me everything."

It was easy to heap fuel on fire that burned like this; and I did it carefully. I affected to be overcome and, clapping hands before my face, threw myself back into my chair.

"You must tell me, Miss Gilmore. You must," he said, sternly.

"No, no, I cannot. I cannot. I forgot. I--I dare not."

"Do you know the scoundrel who has done this?"

"Don't ask me. Don't ask me. I dare not say a word."

"You must," he cried, literally with terrifying earnestness.

"No, no. I dare not. I see it all now. Oh, poor Gareth. Poor, dear Gareth."

"You must tell me. You shall. I am her father, and as God is in heaven, I will have his life if he have wronged her."

I did not answer but sat on with my face still covered, thinking. I had stirred a veritable whirlwind of wrath in his heart and had to contrive to calm it now so as to use it afterwards for my own ends. CHAPTER VIII

COUNT KARL

Colonel Katona's impatience mounted fast; and when he again insisted in an even more violent tone that I should tell him all I knew, I had to fall back upon a woman's second line of defence. I became hysterical.

I gurgled and sobbed, choked and gasped, laughed and wept in regulation style; and then, to his infinite confusion and undoing, I fainted. At least I fell back in my chair seemingly unconscious, and should have fallen on the floor, I believe in thoroughness, had he not caught me in his rough, powerful arms and laid me on a sofa.

I can recall to this day the fusty, mouldy smell of that 

 Prev. P 43/222 next