Miranda spread the glove out on the table, and carefully divided and spread out the fingers. "I will tell you," she said at length, with something of a spirt in the quickness of her speech. "I am still capable of remorse, though very likely you can hardly believe that. Do you remember," she began to speak with greater ease, "when we rode out to Ronda La Viega, I asked you why you never expressed what you felt? I was then beginning to be afraid that you would take my--my trick too much to heart--that you would really think I needed you. My fear became certain this afternoon, when I--I was putting the flower in your coat. I was sorry then, as you saw when you came into the room. I was yet more sorry when you spoke to me as you did, for I thought that if you hadn't cared, if you had never intended to be more than my friend, the trick would not have mattered so much. And that was just what I meant, when I said it was the friend I wanted, not the lover." Charnock listened to the explanation, accepted it and put it away in his mind. "I see," he remarked, and her bosom rose and fell quickly. "All this time you have been just playing with me as you played with Wilbraham this afternoon." "Just in the same way," she returned without flinching. "Ah, but you dropped his flower down the cliff," he exclaimed suddenly. "You forget that yours had already fallen on to the ground." "Yes, that's true," and the suspicion died out of his face. "And that basket of flowers?" he asked. This time, and for the first time since the questions had begun, Miranda did flinch. She had a great difficulty in answering, "It has already been sent off." "To Gibraltar?" Miranda's difficulty increased. "To whom at Gibraltar? A friend, a man?" Miranda's face grew very white; she tried to speak and failed; her throat, her lips, refused the answer. "At all events," she managed to whisper hoarsely, "not to a woman," and thereupon she laughed most mirthlessly, till the strange, harsh, strangled noise of it penetrated as something unfamiliar to Charnock's dazed mind. "I beg your pardon," he said; "I was forgetful. I had no right to ask you," and he rose from his chair. She rose too. "I am glad," he continued with a formal politeness, "that you do not after all stand in need of anyone's help." "Oh, no," she replied carelessly, "no one's;" and almost before she was aware, he was holding her wrists, one in each of his hands, and with his eyes he was searching her face, silently interrogating her for the truth. Once before, upon the balcony, he had bidden her in just this way answer him, and now, as then, she found herself under a growing compulsion to obey. "You hurt me," she had the wit to say, and instantly Charnock released her wrists. "I beg your pardon," said he, and he walked to the door. At the door he turned. "Tell me," he said abruptly, "you dropped your glove--not that one on the table, but the other--just as you stepped out on to the balcony?"