She roused herself from her momentary abstraction and shook her head almost fiercely. “I cannot help you because I do not know what the secret is,” she cried. Westerham looked at her with his cold, bright eyes, and saw that she spoke the truth, and he was amazed. If she did not know what the secret was, then she could not know the price of it. Should he tell her the price? Melun had said nothing to him on that point, but he could clearly see where matters were trending. Money, he understood, would be of little value to Melun compared to a marriage with Kathleen. He started, and started to such a degree that Madame surveyed him with open suspicion. “Sacrifice,” he said to himself. “Sacrifice.” “Was that what she meant?” And then he added to himself: “Oh, Heaven! If that's the sacrifice, then it shall never be.” Outwardly, however, he only straightened his back and made a formal little bow to the astonished woman on the sofa. “I believe you, Madame,” he said, “when you declare that you do not know.” For a few moments he lapsed into silence, debating with himself whether he should drop the bombshell into Madame's camp now, or whether he should keep what, to this woman, would be the coping-stone of Melun's villainy—his intention to marry Kathleen—until such a moment when its dramatic force would turn the scales in his favour. It required almost superhuman resolution on Westerham's part to hold this second secret to himself. But with an effort he held his lips in silence. With the silence, too, he suddenly recognised that he had come into possession of a fact that would prove a mighty weapon with which to deal both with Mme. Estelle and with Melun. Here in truth were wheels within wheels. He felt strangely softened to this unhappy woman, who was evidently trusting much and being trusted little; and with his pity came a speculation as to what extent Melun was playing fair and square with his other confederates in blackmail. He realised now that the captain was in a position to play for his own hand, and that neither the financing of Bagley nor the ambitions of Mme. Estelle, nor yet the brutal violence of Crow and his subsidiary hooligans in Limehouse were necessary to his object. With this conclusion came more complete puzzlement than before. It was the word “murderess” employed by Kathleen which distressed him most. Facile and swift as his imagination was, he had as yet been unable to build up any theory which could possibly account for the obstinate and desperate manner in which Lord Penshurst and his daughter were guarding their extraordinary secret. So long, indeed, did Westerham stand in silence, lost in his own thoughts, that it was with a start he realised that Mme. Estelle was gazing at him with wide-open, fearful eyes. He was quick to grasp the necessity of breaking the silence. And he deliberately chose to bring matters back to a businesslike method by being excessively brutal.