The click of the lock of her pistol warned Frank of his imminent danger. He sprang upon her, and tried to disarm her. But her grip was tight, and her strength more than he had counted on, and a short, desperate struggle for life ensued. As he succeeded in snatching the pistol, it went off. The report brought the servants rushing to the room. They found their mistress on her knees, her hair floating wildly about her, her face ashy white, her arms entwined about her visitor, who stood with the pistol in his hand, trying to disengage himself. “Seize him--seize him--he will kill me!” exclaimed Madam Guiscardini. “He has robbed me, and would murder me!” CHAPTER XXIX. DEFIANCE, NOT DEFENSE. As Madam Guiscardini’s servants stood gaping in amazement and affright at the scene before them, Frank Amberley felt he had need to exercise all the coolness and address left him. He had no desire, nor did he believe that the mistress of the house in her more sober moments could wish, that the police should be called in as assistants. “Stand back!” he thundered, in authoritative tones to the scared domestics, at the same time leveling the pistol at them. “Heaven forbid that I should take the life of any one here, but I will shoot the first who dares to lay a finger on me!” The women squeaked, the men huddled back on one another. None cared to risk the safety of limbs in the service of a mistress for whom not one in the house cared a doit. “Madam Guiscardini knows me,” the young lawyer continued. “She knows where to find me, if I am wanted. She has told you a falsehood. Let me go. Stand back, all of you.” Her first burst of frenzied passion exhausted, Lucia Guiscardini rapidly reviewed her position. A sullen despair succeeded her fury. Certainly, it would not be to her interest that the police should be called. This desperate man would probably raise a counter-charge against her, and there would be an investigation. As he was a friend of Paul Desfrayne’s, he must inevitably within a few hours learn the damning fact of the death of the man Gilardoni. “They will set people to work,” she said to herself; “and they will find out that I was with him yesterday. Not the cleverest chemist on earth will be able to trace the poison, but they may trap me, for all that.” This idea raced through her brain like lightning, so that she seemed only to have time to unlink her arms from about Frank Amberley, place her hands to her forehead as if in horror, and then fall back in an admirably simulated swoon. “Stand aside, and let me pass,” again exclaimed Frank Amberley, finding himself thus released. “Seize him! Don’t let him go!” faintly cried one or two in the rear of the group in the doorway.