“Don’t you? Well, I’ll tell you! I was in a house in Onslow Square, across the way from Lord Abbotsford’s, one afternoon last week; I was dull, and looked out the window. You came, you went; you came, you went”--moving his hand to and fro like a weaver’s shuttle--“the last time you were agitated, but not your daughter; she pushed you in.” He paused, looking deliberately at her. “The second time you came out you hurried--needlessly.” “Mark, Mark.” She was beside him, clutching his arm hard with her slim white hand. “He was dead when I went in, I swear he was dead! I went back to get----” “Your photograph, and the--other things. Well, you got them! I congratulate you. But as for his being dead”--he shrugged his rounded shoulders, heedless of her desperate hold on his arm. “My God, do you think I killed him?” The words came bleakly after a silence, when the slow dropping of the coals from the grate had sounded loud. “Would you like to stand your trial if I told all I saw? If you could convince the jury, you could convince me afterward, you know.” The hand on his arm relaxed suddenly. “Mark, Mark,” the woman said bitterly, “once I trusted you, when all the world condemned you----” “And kicked me from your door afterward like a troublesome dog,” he interrupted her quietly. “Well, it’s my turn now! Give me the diamonds, and your dog holds his tongue.” “Do you mean sell them to you?” She had sunk into a chair as if she could never rise again. “No, I mean give,” he said relentlessly. “Don’t you understand? It’s my price; the price of silence.” “But I’m ruined! If you take them we are beggars on the street, the girl and I. I took the diamonds because--look round you”--breaking off desperately--“don’t you see we have nothing? There is a bill of sale on the furniture, the lease of the house is up--do you want me to starve?” “You have never starved yet,” he retorted. “But if you prefer to hang, keep the diamonds. I, too, want money, and if you don’t pay me, some one else will. Look!” He held to her a printed paper, that swam before her eyes. “I can’t read it,” she muttered. “No? It is that five hundred pounds reward is offered for the discovery of the murderer of Lord Abbotsford. Your diamonds are worth eight hundred, so you will pay me best. Only if you fail me--well, if one can’t have cake, one takes gingerbread!” He leaned toward her threatening, sinister, yet smiling. “You had better give me the cake.” “How do I know”--after all, she was brave in her fashion, he could not help wondering how she found courage to bargain--“how do I know that you will not take my cake and their gingerbread? Giving you what you say I have will not make you faithful.” “Nothing will make me faithful,” said Marcus Wray, with a noiseless laugh. “But the diamonds will help, and if your daughter is a sensible girl she will do the rest. I am coming to see her--very often.” He rose as he spoke and walked to the mantelpiece, where a heavily framed picture hung.