And in the languor of happiness that was in his own blood, he believed her. “But you hate those things!” “Not if you say they are right.” “They are, I suppose,” he answered slowly. “A man’s blood cries from the ground for justice, and I was his only friend. But I don’t think I ought to talk about it--to you.” “If I am going to be your wife, will you always hide unpleasant things from me?” softly. “I don’t think I should like that.” “I’m never going to hide anything from you,” he cried, with love in his voice. “But there isn’t much to tell.” She listened with a heart like ice as he told her all that she knew so well--the missing photograph, the money, the diamonds--she had to hold herself hard not to forestall him as he talked. Would he never come to something new? But when he came to it she was thankful for the darkness that hid her face. “The diamonds vanished utterly,” he was saying; “but the other day, one of them, a very curious stone, with a pink tinge in it, turned up in Amsterdam. The tracing of it will be long, but certain in the end; it will ruin the man or woman who took it.” “Or woman!” The interruption was nearly a cry. “What woman would do such things?” “It looked as if a woman had taken away the photograph.” He drew her closer. “Look out, the path is slippery!” “Very slippery,” said Ismay Trelane, keeping down the dry sob in her throat. Slippery, and on the very edge of doom, this path that she must walk to the end. “You see, there must have been a woman in it somewhere, for Abbotsford was going to be married, and he was leaving all the people he had been friendly with, and arranging all his affairs.” “Say it plainly,” said the old Ismay Trelane, who had been brought up to uncanny knowledge. “I can’t say it--to you,” Cylmer returned, with shame. “Go on, then, I know what you mean. Let us say the photograph was the woman’s he was leaving for his wife.” “Then, don’t you see, it must have either been she or some man for her who came back and took it.” “I think it must have been a man!” Her voice through her white lips sounded almost indifferent. “A woman would not dare.” “Whichever it was, they were mad to take the diamonds. I don’t know,” he continued, “that it’s going to make much difference. The diamonds may be traced, of course, but they are not the clue I spoke about. Kivers tells me there was something found in the room when they were getting things ready for the new Lord Abbotsford’s family. It will probably show clearly enough whether the murderer was a man or not.” “Something found! What, I wonder?” like lightning she was going over that day. Her mother had not dropped or lost anything; she could not have, or she would have missed it, and said so, Ismay thought, in new terror. “Why must it belong to the man who killed him? What was found, I mean? Fifty people may have been in and out of that room since he died.”