The change in her tone was unmistakable. Her manner became more guarded, more studiously careless, but the face exposed to the merciless raking of his gaze wore a faintly distressed flush. "He claimed kinship with you," he insisted, smiling pleasantly at her, while he pulled at his iron-grey moustache with a large, well-shaped hand. "I can't help feeling he was justified even on the most slender grounds. He was related to you by marriage, so he said." She looked at him inquiringly. "By marriage only," he added, unconsciously quoting Lawless. "Yes!" Her composure had reasserted itself. The man who watched her felt puzzled to understand what there had been in his tactless speech to cause her embarrassment, what there was in his further speech to relieve the strain. Her disapproval of the man must be fairly deep-rooted when an indirect mention of him caused her distress. She turned the tables while he was thus wondering, and roused dark doubts and anxious suspicions in his own breast as to the honesty of purpose of the reckless adventurer in whom he had confided an important trust. "You speak of Mr Lawless," she said quietly. "He called upon me to-day." "Indeed?" The Colonel's eyes snapped. He hunched his shoulders, and jerked his big head forward and peered hard at her. Intuition told her what he was thinking. He feared treachery. Distrust grew in him, distrust of the man for whose services he was paying,--the man who was connected by marriage with this woman who had tricked a drunken boy and robbed him; who was on visiting terms with her, though he had emphatically stated that the connection counted for nothing,--the man who was a friend and comrade of the scoundrel Van Bleit,--the man who was cashiered from the Army for a reason the Colonel had yet to find out. And he intended to find out. He had already started inquiries. She looked back at him steadily, and her slightly raised eyebrows betokened a faint curiosity. She was fencing with him. They were fighting a duel with wit for their weapons; and if the first advantage had been on his side, the second and greater advantage was to her. The knowledge annoyed him. "Mr Lawless is to be doubly congratulated," he said drily. "Many men would envy him his reputation, all men would envy him the privilege of calling himself your kinsman." She smiled faintly. "That is flattery, Colonel Grey," she answered. "But tell me why men should envy him his reputation. I was not aware that it justified envy." "Is there nothing enviable in a reputation for valour?" he asked. She turned deathly white, and her eyes glittered angrily in her tense face. "If I do not misunderstand you," she replied, "that is the meanest speech man ever made."