“Let us go to dinner,” she said, as if he were beneath any direct reply. And as she sat at his right hand, opposite her mother, not even the luck of Marcus Wray could warn him that a white adder, with gleaming emerald eyes, coiled up to spring, would have been a safer neighbor for him than Ismay Trelane. CHAPTER XVI. CIRCE’S EYES. Nothing in the whole house was good enough for Marcus Wray. Ismay saw that as soon as she came down to breakfast. Cristiane, behind the great urn, was changed from yesterday; a peace was on her face, and for the first time since the news of her father’s death her eyes bore no traces of a night spent in tears. Marcus Wray had built better than he knew when he came as the one friend who had done the very last things for Gaspard le Marchant. The news had spread like wild-fire through the household. Thomas, the old butler, waited on the strange gentleman from London with a noiseless assiduity he had never shown to either of the Trelanes. “Must you go this morning?” Cristiane said wistfully. “I suppose there is very little temptation to stay in a quiet house like this!” “There is every temptation,” Wray returned, with the frankness that was so good an imitation, “to a tired man who has found old friends here and the kindest of hospitality”--with a glance at Cristiane that made Ismay wince. “But I am afraid I must go and look after my bread and butter. I am one of the working-classes, Miss Le Marchant.” “But you don’t work always! If you have a Saturday and Sunday to spare, will you remember you are wanted here?” For the man seemed a link with her dead father that she could not lose. Wray glanced at Mrs. Trelane. “Cristiane is right, Mr. Wray,” she said. “We shall always be glad to see you, though, of course, at present we do not see any one but old friends.” “Well, we live and learn,” reflected Ismay. “Fancy mother saying she will be glad to see that man. She must be in a blue fright.” She heard in utter silence an arrangement made which would bring Marcus Wray from London on the next Saturday fortnight. She had that much time in which to see Cylmer. In the morning sunshine what she had overheard last night in the dusk seemed monstrous and absurd. Yet there sat the man whose profession was blackmail, and there sat the woman who feared him, pale, worn, and harried, in the dainty breakfast-room. “There’s plenty of time, that is the only thing,” Ismay thought, as she saw Cristiane leave the room with Wray and go out by the window onto the terrace. The morning was almost warm, and they walked up and down there, like old friends, a hideous sight to the girl who watched them over her empty teacup. “Plenty of time; he is too clever to hurry and make a scandal in the country.” She wondered morbidly how he would set about his hideous end when the time was ripe. “Nonsense!” she said to herself smartly. “I shall have the upper hand long before that, though I don’t know how yet.”