The lawyer's red face had turned pale, and looked yellow in the gaslight. The hot atmosphere of the room evidently made him gasp, used as he was to it, for he opened his mouth as if to speak, then, closing it again, signed to the clerk to leave the room. Left alone with his visitor, Dombrain, still maintaining the same position, stood watching her with a mesmeric stare as she glided into one of the chairs beside the table. "Won't you sit down, Mr. Alfred Dombrain?" His face was suddenly suffused with a rush of blood, and he sat down heavily. "Madam! who are you?" "Don't you know? Ah! what a pity; and you have such a good memory for voices." "I--memory--voices," he stammered, moving restlessly. "Yes; why not, Mr. Damberton?" "Hush! For God's sake, hush! Who are you? Who are you?" The woman flung back her veil, and he recoiled from the sight of her face with a hoarse, strangled cry. "Jezebel Pethram!" "Once Jezebel Pethram, now Miriam Belswin. I see you remember faces as well as voices--and names also. Ah! what an excellent memory." Mr. Dombrain _alias_ Damberton collected his scattered senses together, and, going over to a small iron safe set in the wall, produced a tumbler and a bottle of whisky. Mrs. Belswin looked at him approvingly as he drank off half a glass of the spirit neat. "That's right; you'll need all your Dutch courage." Quite forgetting the demands of hospitality, Dombrain replaced the bottle and glass in the respectable safe, and resumed his seat at the table with his ordinary bullying nature quite restored to him by the potent spirit. "Now, then, Mrs. Pethram, or Belswin, or whatever you like to call yourself," he said, in a harsh, angry tone, "what do you want here?" "I want you." "Ho, ho! The feeling isn't reciprocal. Leave my office." "When I choose." "Perhaps a policeman will make you go quicker," growled Dombrain, rising. "Perhaps he will," retorted Mrs. Belswin, composedly; "and perhaps he'll take you along with him." "Infernal nonsense." "Is it! We'll try the experiment, if you like." Mr. Dombrain resumed his seat with a malediction on all women in general, and Mrs. Belswin in particular. Then he bit his nails, and looked at her defiantly, only to quail before the fierce look in her eyes. "It's no use beating about the bush with a fiend like you," he growled sulkily, making a clumsy attempt to appear at his ease. "Not a bit." "I wish you'd go away," whined Dombrain, with a sudden change of front. "I'm quite respectable now. I haven't seen you for twenty years. Why do you come now and badger me? It isn't fair to pull a man down when he's up." "Do you call this up?" sneered Mrs. Belswin, looking round the dingy office. "It's up enough for me." The woman grinned in a disagreeable manner, finding Mr. Dombrain's manner very amusing. She glanced rapidly at him with her fierce eyes, and he wriggled uneasily in his chair.