“I named no names. Indeed I never said he was—why, Stephen, how could he have been, when you know as well as I do, that he was out of England for three years at that time; he was _attaché_ as they call it at the embassy in—I forget, some German Court, whilst I was at Orleigh with the dowager Lady Lamerton.” The captain stood still, thinking; as one frozen and fast to the spot. “Besides,” put in the woman, with a flicker of her old inordinate vanity and falsehood, in spite of her present fear, “you think very bad of me if you suppose I’d have took up with any one less than a viscount.” A long silence ensued, in which the tick of the clock sounded loudly and harshly. “Marianne,” he said at last, hoarsely. “It is all your fault and stupidity,” said his wife hastily. “You have no judgment, and a brain on fire with religious craze. If you would but behave like an ordinary, sensible man and think reasonably, you would never have fallen into this mistake. You had only to think a moment reasonably, and you’d know that it was not, and could not be a man, and he only the honourable, and like to be no better than a baron, many hundred miles away at a foreign court, and the postage then not twopence ha’penny as ’tis now.” “Marianne,” said Saltren again hoarsely, and he took a step nearer to her, and grasped her wrist. “Marianne, answer me,” Saltren spoke with a wild flicker in his eyes as though jack-o’-lanterns were dancing over those deep mysterious pools, “as you will have to answer at the great day of account—is Giles _not_ the son of Lord Lamerton?” “Of course not, I never said so. Who but a fool would suppose he was, and a week’s post and foreign languages between? He never left—Munich I think it was, but it may have been Munchausen, and I never left Orleigh all the three years. Besides—I never said it was. I named no names.” Now a shudder ran through Saltren, a convulsive quake, but it was over instantaneously. Then, with his iron hand he pressed the woman’s wrist downwards. “Kneel,” he said, “kneel.” “You are hurting me, Stephen! let go!” “Kneel,” he repeated, “kneel.” He forced her from her feet to her knees, before him, she was too frightened to disobey; and her vain efforts to parry reproof, and lay the blame on him, had been without success, he had not noticed even the mean evasions. “Marianne,” he said solemnly, in his deepest, most tremulous tones. “Tell me—who was the father of Giles?” “That I will not—never—no, I cannot tell.” “You shall, I will hold you here, with my hand clenched, and not let you go—No, never, not all the coming night, not all next day, all the night following—for ever, and ever, until you confess.” She stooped towards the floor, to hide her face from his searching eyes, with the lambent flame in them that frightened her. Then she looked furtively towards the window, and next to the door, into the back kitchen, seeking means of escape.