"Adventuress!" she echoed, starting up with clenched hands. "You call me an adventuress--you, whose past is blacker than my own--you who owe to me your present position as Minister!" He glanced at her surprised; he had not been prepared for this fierce, defiant retort. Again he laughed, a laugh low and strangely hollow. "You forget," he said, "that a word from me would result in your arrest, imprisonment, and disgrace." She held her breath and her brows contracted. That fact, she knew, was only too true. In an instant she perceived that for the present she must conciliate this man, who was one of the rulers of Europe. The game she was now playing was, indeed, the most desperate in all her career, but the stake was the highest, the most valuable to her in all the world, her own love, peace, and happiness. "And suppose you took this step," she suggested, finding tongue with difficulty at last. "Don't you think you would imperil yourself? A Foreign Minister, especially in our country, surrounded as he is by a myriad political foes, can scarcely afford to court scandal. I should have thought the examples of Crispi, Rudini, and Brin were sufficient to cause a wary man like yourself to hesitate." "I never act without due consideration," the Marquis replied. The voice in which he spoke was the dry, business-like tone he used towards Ambassadors of the Powers when discussing the political situation, as he was almost daily compelled to do. In Rome, no man was better dressed than the Marquis Montelupo; no man had greater tact in directing matters of State; and in no man did his Sovereign place greater faith. As he sat beside her in slovenly attire, his grey moustaches uncurled, his chin bearing two or three days' growth of grey beard, it was hard to realise that this was the same man who, glittering with orders, so often ascended the great marble and gold staircase of the Quirinal, to seek audience with King Humbert; whose reputation as a statesman was world-wide, and whose winter receptions at his great old palazzo in the Via Nazionale were among the most brilliant diplomatic gatherings in Europe. "I have carefully considered the whole matter," he said, after a moment's pause. "I arrived in London yesterday, and from what I have learnt I have decided to take certain steps without delay." "Then you have been to the Embassy!" she exclaimed breathless. "You've denounced me to Castellani!" "There was no necessity for that," he answered coldly. "He already knows that you are his enemy." "I his enemy!" she echoed. "I have never done him an evil turn. He has heard some libellous story, I suppose, and, like all the world, believes me to be without conscience and without remorse." "That's a pretty good estimate of yourself," the Marquis observed. "If you had any conscience whatever you would have replied to my letters, and not maintained a dogged silence through all these months."