friend.”

“But you don’t think I’ve lied, do you?” he asked quickly, not grasping my meaning.

“Of course not. Why should you? We know each other too well to make false charges against our friends,” I answered. “It is a mystery—a complete mystery.”

“Absolutely. I was struck dumb when I discovered her in the arms of the fellow. I couldn’t really believe my own eyes.” Then, after a pause, he asked in a lower tone, “What secret of hers did he hold, I wonder?”

“Ah! what indeed.”

“To me, it is very evident that she met the fellow at that lonely spot under compulsion. She may have reciprocated his affection at one time, but her manner was inert and unresponsive. She allowed him to caress her because she was in deadly fear—I’m absolutely certain of that.”

“Then she didn’t betray any love for him?”

“None whatever. In his reproaches, however, he reminded her of how she had once loved him and allowed him to think that he might aspire to her hand. He reproached her with cruelty and double-dealing, saying that she had betrayed him to his enemies, and that now, in return, he would reveal to the world her dark and terrible secret. This announcement electrified her. Until that moment she apparently had no idea of her peril, but instantly she saw that he held her future entirely in his hands—and—well, that’s all.”

I stood upon the hearthrug, my hands deep in my trouser-pockets, my back to the high, old stone overmantel that bore emblazoned the arms of the Scarcliffs, and remained silent. What could I say? What could I think of the woman who was in her room somewhere above in that great old mansion—the woman who was, no doubt, still awake in terror of the morrow?

The stable clock clanged out half-past two, and presently Eric stepped on tip-toe to the door, opened it and looked down the great hall, dark, gloomy and mysterious, with its stands of armour, its tattered banners and its old carved furniture of centuries ago.

Across the hall he crept until lost in the darkness, and a few minutes later returned carrying two hats, and saying that all was quiet in the servants’ hall, and that everybody had gone to bed.

Then we closed the door, took a wooden chair to the window, opened it, and scrambled through, dropping noiselessly down upon the grass beyond.

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