"If you give me a little time," he said, "I shall hope to see my way." "Ah! ah!—a little time—seven years perhaps the Judge will say. But I leave it to my wife—she is the clever one. My dear, what shall I do?" "At the present moment put on your hat and go back to the City," Mrs. Benstein said. "I fancy I shall know how to deal with Count Lefroy. You can’t have your money back and your revenge as well. I fancy you can safely leave me to settle matters." Aaron Benstein was certain of it. He beamed proudly at his wife and kissed his fingers as he put on his hat and most obediently waddled out of the room. For a long while neither party at the table spoke. "I’m afraid that I don’t quite understand you," Lefroy ventured at length. "You are not meant to understand me," Isa Benstein retorted. "For the present you are going to be my puppet and dance when I pull the strings. Play me fair, and you shall not suffer for the wrong you have done my husband; play me false, and you shall stand in the dock within an hour after. Come, sir, it is the turn of the woman towards whom you and another scoundrel last night would have shown personal violence had you dared. For the present I shall be content with plain replies to plain questions. Do you know from whence Frobisher obtained the Cardinal Moth?" "I am not quite sure, but I can give a pretty good guess," Lefroy said. "We shall come to that presently. Was Manfred well acquainted with the properties of that accursed flower?" "I should say not. Of course he had a good idea of its value and what one could do with it." "Quite so. Then I suppose that I am correct in assuming that on the night of his death Manfred was party to a conspiracy to steal the orchid from Sir Clement Frobisher; in other words, he acted as your agent, and he was killed in the act of purloining the flower?" Lefroy wriggled uneasily and muttered something. But Mrs. Benstein pinned him firmly down. "I shall abandon you to your fate unless you speak frankly," she said. "Was Manfred trying to steal the Cardinal Moth when he met with his death?" "You may take that for a fact," Lefroy said, as if the words were dragged from him. "Very good. Manfred was going to steal the Moth which previously had been stolen by Sir Clement’s agent from somebody else. Who sold the Moth to Sir Clement?" "I am not quite certain, but I believe it was Paul Lopez," said Lefroy. Mrs. Benstein rose from her seat, and flicked a solitary crumb from her dress. On the whole she did not seem displeased with the day’s work. "Enough for the present," she said. "Take me out and see me into a swift taxi." *CHAPTER XXV.* *A STRIKING LIKENESS.*