"I admit that. At present, to leave that room is to invite death. We must, therefore, make active researches to ascertain the truth. We must find your strange visitor in black." "Find her?" she gasped. "You could never do that." "Why not? She is not supernatural; she lives and is in hiding somewhere, that's evident." "And you would find her, and seek from her the truth?" "Certainly." She shut her lips tight and sat motionless, looking at me. Then at last she said, shuddering-- "No. Not that." "Then you know this woman--or at least you guess her identity," I said in a low voice. She gazed at me with parted lips. "I have already told you that I do not know her," was her firm response. "Then what do you fear?" I demanded. Again she was silent. Whatever potential complicity had lurked in her heart, my words brought her only immeasurable dismay. "I dread such an action for your own sake," she faltered. "Then I will remain till your cousin comes, and ask her what it is." "Ask her?" CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. A SAVANT AT HOME. "Why should I not ask your cousin?" I inquired earnestly. "I see by your manner that you are in sore need of a friend, and yet you will not allow me to act as such." "Not allow you!" she echoed. "You are my friend. Were it not for you I should have died last night." "Your recovery was due to Hoefer, not to myself," I declared. I longed to speak to her of her visit to Whitton and of her relations with the Major, but dare not. By so doing I should only expose myself as an eavesdropper and a spy. Therefore, I was held to silence. My thoughts wandered back to that fateful night when I was called to the house with the grey front in Queen's-gate Gardens. That house, she had told me, was the home of "a friend." I remembered how, after our marriage, I had seen her lying there as one dead, and knew that she had fallen the victim of some foul and deep conspiracy. Who was that man who had called himself Wyndham Wynd? An associate of the Major's, who was careful in the concealment of his identity. The manner in which the plot had been arranged was both amazing in its ingenuity and bewildering in its complications. And lounging before me there in the low silken chair, her small mouth slightly parted, displaying an even set of pearly teeth, sat the victim--the woman who was unconsciously my wedded wife. Her attitude towards me was plainly one of fear lest I should discover her secret. It was evident that she now regretted having told me of that strange, dreamlike scene which was photographed so indelibly upon her memory, that incident so vivid that she vaguely believed she had been actually wedded. "So you are returning to Atworth again?" I asked, for want of something better to say. "I believe that is Nora's intention," she responded quickly, with a slight sigh of relief at the change in our conversation. "Have you many visitors there?"