There was no outcry of surprise from Edenborough. He had some pride. But his knees began to tremble in the firelight, and his unclenched hands to twitch. "I don't believe it," he exclaimed at length. "You tell me what you know!" "All that you yourself suspected, and made yourself ill with suspecting--and couldn't sleep for suspecting--long ago!" Pitiful tone and tender hand carried a heavier conviction than the words. And now it was the patient who had sunk into the chair, the doctor bending over his bowed and quivering shoulders. [Illustration: "Mark my words closely"] "You are not the first man, my dear Edenborough," he went on, "who would seem to have been betrayed in cold blood by a woman--by _the_ woman. Mark my words closely. I say it seems so. I would not condemn the greatest malefactor unheard. I meant to hear Miss Trevellyn first--feeling in my bones, against all reason, that there may still be some unimaginable explanation. But, if the worst be true of her, then the best is true of you; for you are the first man I have known bear the brunt as you have borne it, my very dear fellow!" "What makes you suspect her?" groaned Edenborough to the ground. "It's not a case of suspicion--don't deceive yourself as to that, Edenborough. I _know_ that Miss Trevellyn produced--and parted with--those last two sketches about which there's been all the trouble. I only _suspect_ that she got you to show her the originals, almost as soon as they were made, on the plea of her tremendous interest in the Navy." "Quite true; she did," said Edenborough, but as though he did not appreciate what he was saying, as though something else had stuck in his mind. "But it _was_ a tremendous interest!" he exclaimed, jumping up. "It was her father's interest; his life, indeed! Isn't it inconceivable that his daughter--apart from everything else I've found her--that she of all people should do a thing like this?" "I am afraid the inconceivable happens almost as often as the unexpected," said Dollar, with a sigh. "Criminology, indeed, prepares us for little else. Think of the perfectly good mothers who have flown to infanticide as the first relief of a mind unhinged! The inversion of the ruling passions is one of the sure symptoms of insanity." "But of course she's mad," cried Edenborough, "if she's guilty at all. But that's what I can't and won't believe. I can believe it one minute but not the next, just as I've suspected and laughed at my suspicions all this nightmare time. One look in her face has always been enough, and would be at this minute." "Well, we shall soon see," said Dollar, glancing at the clock. "But I can only warn you that my evidence is overwhelming." "Let's have it, then; what is your evidence?" demanded Edenborough, in a fresh fit of stone-blind defiance.