"No," protested Malvano quickly, "that's scarcely the language to use towards one who has risked all that your wife has risked. I entirely agree with her that the game's desperate enough. We must allow no discord." "Exactly," Nenci admitted. "The reason why I have summoned you here is because the time is past for mere words. We must now act swiftly and with precision. There is only one person we have to fear." "What is his name?" they all cried, almost with one accord. "The man whom Gemma loves--Charles Armytage," the black-haired man answered, his eyes still fixed maliciously upon the woman before him. In an instant Gemma sprang up, her tiny hands clenched, an unnatural fire in her eyes. "You would denounce him?" she cried wildly. "You who have held me bound and silent for so long, now seek to destroy the one single hope to which I cling; to snatch from me for ever all chance of peace and happiness!" The eyes of the five persons at the table were upon her as she, strikingly beautiful, stood erect and statuesque before them. They all saw how deeply in earnest and how desperate she was. But Nenci laughed. The sound of his harsh voice stung her. She turned upon him fiercely, with a dangerous glint in her clear blue eyes, a look that none of that assembly had ever before witnessed. "In the past," she said, "I have served you. I have been your catspaw. I have risked love, life, everything, for the one object so near my heart: the desire for a vengeance complete and terrible. Because of my association with you"--and she gazed around at them as she spoke--"I have been debarred marriage with the man I love. In order that he should leave me, that his daily presence should no longer fill me with regret and vain longing for happiness, I was compelled to resort to self-accusation, and to denounce myself as an adventuress." "Then you actually spoke the truth for once in your life!" Nenci observed superciliously, a fierce expression in his black eyes. "Enough!" Malvano protested. "We didn't come here to discuss Gemma's love affairs."