“Who kept this from Cristiane?” he said roughly. “Was it you?” “So you want to go back to your Cristiane?” For one second her eyes flashed. “I don’t care if I never see her again”--impatiently. “Yesterday, God forgive me, I would have let her die for you.” Yesterday! The utter change in his voice hurt. “Don’t you see it isn’t Cristiane who is in question? It’s what you did, or did not. Tell me, did you keep that card?” “I kept it,” very evenly. “I loved you, and I was afraid of her.” “You loved me?” he laughed, unbelieving. “Why, you had only seen me once!” The contemptible thought of his money, his position, crowded into his brain and maddened him. “Oh, not me!” he ended in a tone that was an insult. But she never noticed it. She sat down on the stile, as if she were tired. That stile where the gate of heaven had been closed on her. “So you came about that note and Wray!” she said. “Well, I did both things! What next?” It was Cylmer’s turn to wince. “This next,” he answered, and he could not meet her eyes, that once had been so sweet, so serene. “It was for your sake, because I pitied you, that I told nothing of all I knew about your mother. When you asked me, I was silent. And all the time you knew that she was not only unfit to have charge of an innocent girl, but was a murderess.” “I thought so. Yes.” “And then I loved you. And you used my love to find out what the police were doing. But even your nerves could not keep you from making mistakes. You fainted when I told you the police were on the murderer’s track, and I was too blind to know you had excellent reason. And because I was a fool I gave you that scarab, and I suppose you have profited by my folly, and destroyed the others, though you had ‘never seen it before!’” “Miles, she is my mother.” Yet there was no pleading in her voice. “And I thought I was your lover. But it seems I was mistaken. There is Wray. I will leave the field to him.” For the first time her temper rose. “And then you will tell what you know of my mother--and me--to the police, and the countryside?” she said scathingly. To hear her cut Cylmer to the quick. “That is what I will not do. To my shame, I will help you both to go. I will let my friend lie unavenged. I will balk the investigation--if I can, and for my shame I shall know I am a party to a crime. This is what I came to tell you. It is not safe to stay here a day. You have that scarab, but by this time a description of it is with all the police in England, and any day they may be on you. If they ask me again on my oath if I can identify that photograph, what can I answer? For I saw your mother in that very attitude, that very dress, admiring her reflection in a mirror last night. If you want money I will give it to you; but make an excuse to Cristiane, and get your mother away. Let me never see her again, that I may forget her.” “And me? You would forget me?” her voice oddly flat and lifeless.