"Ah, yes, you are angry of course; but I let that pass. I have one account to settle with you Trenoweths, and that is enough for me. Three times have I had you in my power, Mr. Jasper Trenoweth--three times or four--and let you escape. Once beneath Dead Man's Rock when I had my fingers on your young weasand and was stopped by those cursed fishermen. Idiots that they were, they thought the sight of me had frightened you and made you faint. Faint! You would have been dead in another half-minute. How I laughed in my sleeve while that uncle of yours was trying to make me understand--me--what was my name then?--oh, ay, Georgio Rhodojani. However, you escaped that time: and once more you hardly guessed how near you were to death, when I looked in at the window on the night after the inquest. Why, in my mind I was tossing up whether or not I should murder you and your white-faced mother. I should have done so, but thought you might hold some knowledge of the secret after your meeting with Railton, so that it seemed better to bide my time." "If it be any satisfaction to you," I interrupted, "to know that had you killed me then you would never have laid hands on that clasp yonder, you are welcome to it." "It is," he answered. "I am glad I did not kill you both: it left your mother time to see her dead husband, and has given me the pleasure of killing you now: the treat improves with keeping. Well, let me go on. After that I was forced to leave the country for some time--" "For another piece of villainy, which your wife discovered." "How do you know that? Oh, from Claire, I suppose: however, it does not matter. When I came back I found you: found you, and struck again. But again my cursed luck stood in my way and that damned friend of yours knocked me senseless. Look at this mark on my cheek." "Look at the clasp and you will see where your blow was struck." "Ah, that was it, was it?" he said, examining the clasp slowly. "I suppose you thought it lucky at the time. So it was--for me. For, though I made another mistake in the fog that night, I got quits with your friend at any rate. I have chafed often enough at these failures, but it has all come right in the end. I ought to have killed your father upon Adam's Peak; but he was a big man, while I had no pistol and could not afford to risk a mistake. Everything, they say, comes to the man who can wait. Your father did not escape, neither will you, and when I think of the joy it was to me to know that you and Claire, of all people--" But I would hear no more. Mad as I was with shame and horror for my grandfather's cruelty, I knew this man, notwithstanding his talk of revenge, to be a vile and treacherous scoundrel. So when he spoke of Claire I burst forth--