'Who had already withdrawn,' said George. 'I think I understand,' Lady Oxford's look of humiliation had enlightened him, 'and I think your ladyship understands with me. Mr. Scrope is a sort of a gentleman, and would prefer to do his dirty work without appearing as a spy. He has made use of your ladyship. He sends you the Plot and spurs you to disclose it with his ballad. He would have disclosed it himself, I doubt not, had not your ladyship served his turn. But Mr. Scrope has his refinements, and, besides that he spares himself, would take a particular pleasure in compassing my ruin at the same time that he outwitted you.' Little wonder that Lady Oxford broke in upon Mr. Kelly's reasonings. It must have been sufficiently galling for her to reflect that in exacting her revenge she had been the mere instrument of a man she had tossed aside. 'It is both of us that he has ruined, not you alone,' she cried. Certainly, Mr. Scrope was a person to reckon with, and had killed quite a covey of birds with one stone. 'Are you sure?' asked Kelly. 'Are you sure of that?' She bent across the table eagerly, but she did not reply to the question. 'Will you kill Scrope,' she flashed out, 'and you and I part friends?' Kelly, even in the midst of this tangle of misfortunes, could not but smile. 'I fear that I may have been anticipated. Mr. Scrope has been watching your ladyship's house to-night--and Mr. Wogan observed him, and, I conceive, has undertaken for him.' Lady Oxford at that smiled too. 'Then he is a dead man,' she said, slowly savouring her words like wine. 'But his death, madam, will not save your letters,' said Kelly; and the fire died out of her face. 'He has betrayed us both,' she moaned. It seemed she had already forgotten how she herself had seized at the occasion of betraying Mr. Kelly. Kelly was in no mood to debate these subtleties. 'Are you sure?' he contented himself with asking for a second time. 'There is one thing Mr. Scrope has not done. He has taken no measures purposely to insure that your letters will be discovered, since he does not know of them; else, no doubt, he would have done his worst. We two are still engaged in a common cause--your ladyship's. Your intentions in my regard I were much less than a man if I did not forgive, granting (what I now know) your ladyship's erroneous interpretation of my ground of offence, the babbling to Lady Mary. Does your ladyship permit me, then, at the eleventh hour, to save you, if I can find a way, from the odious consequences of Mr. Scrope's unparalleled behaviour?' 'You?' Lady Oxford's brows were drawn together in perplexity. The notion that Mr. Kelly was prepared to do this thing was still new and strange to her. 'You?' Her eyes searched his for the truth of his purpose, and found it. 'You?' she said again, but in a voice of gratitude and comprehension. And then, with a gesture of despair, she thrust her chair back and stood up. 'You cannot save yourself. I cannot save you.'