It was not shut. With a little spring she balanced herself on the sill, and slipped down upon the floor, to find that the room was not empty as she had expected. A slight person in deep mourning, who had been seated, rose and confronted her. Joan stared at the white, stern, but beautiful face in sick dismay. This was the woman who had given her the flowers--the posy with the strange, awful threat written on the label, when she was about to enter the bridegroom’s carriage as she left the church after her wedding. "I see--you know me," said the girl. She spoke with icy composure. "I have come to speak to you of your danger." The two looked into each other’s eyes unflinchingly--Vera with a cold condemnatory stare; Joan with the apathy of abject despair. "Come this way, please," she said. Her garments dripped slowly on the polished floor; she glanced at the drops with a curious wonder, then led the way along a passage, and held open a baize door. In another moment the two were shut into Joan’s boudoir, and Joan waved the girl that her wretched, so-called husband had loved, towards a chair. She shook her head, impatiently. "I meant to wait to see you until you were in the dock," she began. "Your whole doings are known, from the first letter you wrote to poor Victor, to the hour I saw you in Haythorn Street, coming out of the house after you had poisoned him and left him to die! I had meant to tell all I knew to the detectives, but they came after me. All is complete--you may be arrested at any moment. Then will come your trial, your condemnation--your hanging. I expect you have dreamt the rope was round your neck; at least, if you have any feeling left in you. Murderess that you are, you have ruined my life, you have killed my dearest love, who loved me, not you--and I was gloating over the idea of your being hanged by the neck till you were dead, when I dreamt of my Victor. I dreamt a shadow--his shadow--bent over me, and said those very words that I thought meant your doom, ’I will repay, saith the Lord!’ I awoke, and knew that I was to come and warn you, that you may escape." She stopped short, gazing curiously at Joan’s drawn, ashen features, features like those of an expressionless corpse. Her eyes, too, were dull, wandering. "Escape?" she said, stupidly. Then she dropped into a chair, feeling half dead, half paralyzed. The thunder rolled faintly in the distance. It seemed to her that she was still seated in the boat, rowing, rowing, and was dreaming this wretched misery. "Yes, escape!" the other repeated, bitterly. "You must confess everything to your husband--mind! everything! Then, perhaps, as I, whom you have injured for life, have had mercy on you, he may! At all events, he may do something to save your neck. You have but a few hours’ safety--"