Half rising from her chair, she turned to him, every muscle in her body seemed to be quivering with excitement. "The police? Do they know it?" "They do. To-morrow the whole world will know it. They've laid hold of the wrong man. They've found it out just before it's a bit too late. They hope to have hold of your friend Townsend soon. They're hoping wrong. His first reckoning will be with me. When that is through, neither he nor I will care who has what's left. Since I have loved you, true and faithful, all these years, I calculated I would come and ask you if, when all is done, you'd give me my reward. We might make a happy ending of it, you and me together, over on the other side. But if you won't, you won't. So I'm through. I've only one word left--good-bye." He held out his hand to her. So far as she was concerned, it went unheeded. Indeed, it would seem, from the eager question which she asked, that most of what he had been saying had gone unheeded too. "Are you sure the police are after him? Are you sure?" He looked at her from under the shadow of his bushy, overhanging eyebrows, in silence, for a moment. Then he said, more in sorrow than in anger-- "So your last thought is of him? Well, I'm sorry!" Without anymore elaborate leave-taking than was comprised in these few words. Mr. Haines went from the room and from the house. Mrs. Carruth seemed scarcely conscious of the fact of his departure. All her faculties and all her thoughts seemed far away. Indeed, it was only after a lapse of some seconds that, looking about her, with a start, she appeared to recognise that she was alone. Getting up, she began to pace feverishly about the room, as if only rapid movement could enable her to control the fires which were mounting in her blood. "I wonder if it's true! I wonder if it is! Perhaps that explains why it is he hasn't come. I may have been misjudging him. Perhaps he can't come. Suppose he is arrested. Perhaps he doesn't know what it is the police have discovered. He's nearly certain not to know. Who's to tell him? I will go and tell him! This instant! Now! I will warn him against the police and against Jack Haines. I will save him yet, yet. He shall owe it all to me." With her hands she brushed her hair from her brow--the hair which she had so carefully arranged. "After all I have longed for, after all I have lived through, I do believe that for him I should esteem the world well lost." She ran upstairs--literally ran. She put on a coat and hat in a space of time which, for shortness, considering that a pretty woman was concerned, was simply marvellous. And having put them on, she ran down the stairs. She hurried through the hall. She opened the hall door. And as she did so something or some one bounded up the steps--rather than mounted them in an ordinary fashion. There was a flash of something in the air. Mrs. Carruth was borne backwards.