“Mark, you must see,” she wailed wretchedly, “that it’s no time to have a nine days’ wonder here. It would be madness to draw attention to either of us, now.” She leaned forward, haggard, imploring. “I’ll give you anything, all I have, if you only go away and let the girl be.” “I told you before that was abject rot,” he exclaimed icily. “I’m not playing for the few pounds you would forget to send when I was out of your way. I mean to have all this”--glancing around him--“and Ismay, in a satin gown, to take off my boots.” For once his calm was gone; he breathed sharply. Mrs. Trelane rocked to and fro in her chair, with fear and loathing. “She’ll never have you,” she said through her teeth. “Then you can swing,” said Mr. Wray, with a significant finger at his own throat. And this time she made no protestation of her innocence. Any one listening might well have believed in her guilt. When she spoke again her voice was hollow, like a dying woman’s. “You can’t poison her without being found out.” Mr. Wray threw back his head and laughed noiselessly, as was his habit. The joke, for some unknown reason, was apparently an excellent one. “Dear lady, how your mind reverts to a groove,” he said, surveying her with half-shut eyes that made him more hideous than ever. “Your method is not going to be employed again,” and he laughed once more, unmercifully. “Mark,” she was crying hysterically, “don’t laugh like that! You’ll kill me if you laugh. You frighten me--I could scream”--her sobs broke her words. “Tell me what you mean, and let me go.” “I mean an accident, then; a common or garden accident. There couldn’t be any fuss about that; it might happen to every one. And the less you know about it the better. If you knew you’d do something foolish, and the whole thing would be made a mess of.” “It will put us both in our graves, never mind what I do.” She turned on him fiercely. He got up coolly and pulled up the blind, staring out into the moonlight night. “Does it interest you to know that it’s freezing hard? And there’s not a breath of wind on the lake,” he asked. “Nothing interests me while you live to curse my eyes,” she said with unutterable bitterness, and in the silence of the room he laughed to himself. “Then let me advise you to drink that whisky and go to bed,” he said, dropping the blind and turning around. “Also to rejoice that you will not encounter any one in the passages,” glancing distastefully at the channels her tears had marked through her powder. “You have prepared me for a good night’s rest,” she returned heavily, opening the door and making a few steps into the dark hall outside. The next minute she flew back again. “Mark, quick--for Heaven’s sake! There’s some one, something, there. I can’t go.” “You don’t mean you are believing in that crazy lie of Thomas?” he said after a contemptuous survey of the empty hall, lamp in hand. “There isn’t a creature stirring.” “He believes it; Jessie believes it.”