“Yes—by watching through the hole in the wainscoting. She saw where Barbara kept them, and found a key to fit the coffer. Jael seemed to have foreseen something, for to-night she found that the pistols were no longer there.” My lord turned to the table where the steel barrels glistened in the candle-light. He picked them up and looked at them closely, a deep pucker of thought upon his forehead. “Who would have thought that the girl had so much devil in her! I tell you, Nan, she must have been playing with us all these years, watching and waiting, and pretending to be asleep. And it was a narrow thing, by God! But for that woman of yours, I should be lying there, where—” He did not complete the sentence, but broke off abruptly, for the conscious shock seemed to strike him more heavily now the intensity of the moment had passed. He looked white about the mouth, and his eyes had a hard, scared wrath in them that made them ugly. Anne Purcell turned on the window-seat to look at him, and then covered her face with her hand. “She said that the stain is still there. And it is—” “Fiddle-faddle! What of that, Nan?” And the evil spirit in him flashed out fiercely. “The girl has cornered us. It is no time for whimpering.” He recovered his serene and cynical poise almost instantly, and, putting two fingers in the pocket of his embroidered vest, drew out the curb of gold with its knot of pearls. “This little thing came very near ending everything. I shall give it no second chance. Like the easy fool I am I put that cloak away and forgot it, never suspecting that it had left such a clew behind. Jack turned it out of an old chest when he came home shirtless from sea, and wore it that night at Hortense’s. It was only when we got home that I noticed the thing, and talked him into surrendering it. She must have cross-questioned him. And, by the prophets of Israel, Jack was near having a bullet in his heart! She said she told him nothing. God grant that’s true. Jack’s a man with a tight mouth and a kind of grimness that sails straight in the face of a storm.” He paused, staring hard at the flame of one of the candles, and tossing the chain up and down in his palm. “What are you going to do, Stephen?” “Do?” And his face darkened, although so close to the light. “Keep the Spanish fury out of danger. What can you desire—” She stretched out an arm to him, her face rigid with dread. “No, not again, Stephen. I cannot bear it—I will not—” “There, there,” and he laughed, “how you women leap at conclusions! There is no such serious need. But I value my neck too much, and yours, my dear, to let her run at large.” “Then how?” He looked down at her steadily. “The girl is mad.” “Barbara!”