“Forgive me,” I stammered. “I was obliged to speak to you before you saw Sir Frank Tarleton. I had to explain to you who he was and what he was going to ask you.” She interrupted me with a gesture of scorn. She pointed to the roof of the barn, just visible over the crest of the slope from where we stood. “How dared you ask me to meet you _there_? Was there no other place?” Her voice shook. “How could you be so brutal? To remind me! To drag me back to the one spot on earth that I was trying to forget!” The reproach pierced me like a knife. She was right. What was I but a brute? What else is any man in dealing with the mystery of a woman’s heart--with those delicate fibres which our rude touch so often bruises and rends unawares? I could have thrown myself at her feet and begged her to trample the life out of me. But there would have been no reparation in that; there was none in anything that I could think of doing. It was a case of least said soonest mended. I had to leave the wound I had given her to heal itself, and meanwhile try to render her the only service that was in my power. “You can say nothing to me that I don’t deserve, nothing that is severe enough,” I answered. “I can only plead that I was distracted by anxiety, on your account.” The indignation in her face turned to terror. “What do you mean? You wrote to me that I had nothing more to fear.” “I said, nothing more to fear from Dr. Weathered. That was all I thought it safe to put in a letter. And when I wrote it I hoped that I could protect you from any further trouble. But other things have happened since. There are complications in the case that I couldn’t explain without seeing you, and Sir Frank Tarleton has come down here to see if you can throw light on them.” “Sir Frank Tarleton? Who is he?” “He is the principal medical adviser to the Home Office. I am his assistant.” “But I don’t understand!” She stared at me in natural wonder. “Why should he be mixed up in it? Have you told him anything?” “Nothing; you may be assured of that. But I must tell you what has happened. Weathered is dead.” “Dead.” The blue eyes expanded for a moment in a gleam of relief, almost of exultation. The instant after they froze dreadfully. “Bertrand! You killed him!” she whispered. I shook my head earnestly. “No. I should have killed him, if there had been no other way to save you from him. And I don’t believe any honest man or woman would have blamed me if I had. But it wasn’t necessary. My only object was to destroy the record of your confession, the statement that had placed you in his power. All I did was to drug him enough to make him insensible, and take his keys. When I left the Club at three o’clock in the morning he was still alive. He was found dead where I left him two hours afterwards.” Violet hardly seemed to be listening. Her eyes were still fixed on me like two blue stones. “You did it,” she repeated dully. “You killed him--for my sake!”