“No.” Very low, and it was well Ismay could not see how her mother was cowering before Marcus Wray’s contemptuous eyes. “Don’t you? Well, I made that will. Now, do you know what brought me here?” “To make me pay you to go away”--bitterly. “No, not that. I do not mean to go away; and what good would the pittance you could screw from five hundred a year be to me? I am going to pay you short visits often; the girl likes me----” “Mark,” she broke in, “what for? Why do you want to come to a dull hole like this if it was not to get money out of me?” A thought that sprang in her suddenly made her gasp, and then speak louder. “Or do you want to make love to Cristiane, and marry her, and have me turned out by betraying all you know?” “I don’t mean anything out of that exhaustive catalogue”--coolly. “Let me recall a clause of the will to your memory: ‘If my daughter Cristiane should die unmarried or without children, the property and all moneys of which I am possessed shall go to my only remaining relative, the aforesaid Helen Trelane, reverting on her decease to her only daughter, Ismay Trelane.’ Now do you see my meaning?” His voice was low as caution could make it; his eyes spoke terrors that could not be said even to the wretched woman before him. With a dreadful, strangled wail she was on her knees beside him. “Mark, Mark! Would you make me a murderess?” His eyes burned into hers as he stooped closer to her, where she shook on her knees. “What are you now, if I speak out?” he said slowly. “You can take your choice.” “I can’t do it! It would be madness. She is young. Oh! for God’s sake, say you didn’t mean it.” “Mean what? I said nothing. You need do nothing. But if that happens you are free. Why, you fool! Do you think I want you to give her a dagger?” “Marry her; let me go, and marry her! You’d be rich!” “I am going to marry Ismay,” said Marcus Wray. CHAPTER XV. COILED TO SPRING. Just how long she sat crouched in the dark Ismay Trelane never knew. She heard a bell ring and lamps brought that shone through the chink straight on her. Then there was a tinkle of glasses, and, as a bottle was opened with a sharp explosion, she dared to steal away. “Oh, what wickedness! I never dreamed of such wickedness,” she thought, gaining her own room and locking herself in, as though Wray might come to seek her. “But he sha’n’t do it. I swear he sha’n’t do it, unless he kills me first!” For she knew that somewhere, somehow, death would be lurking in her own house for Cristiane le Marchant; not now, but later on, when people had ceased to talk of Sir Gaspard’s death, and his strange will. Curiously enough, now that she knew the real danger, all her courage had come back to her. It was with nerves of steel that she sat thinking, thinking; her eyes gleaming green in the darkness like a watching leopard’s, that waits to kill.