Now the blood hummed in her ears. If she had built a house of cards, this was the moment when it would topple, and bury her ambition in its ignominious downfall. But Lord Northmuir’s slow speech had quickened her hope, for she said to herself that it was not spontaneous; and gazing keenly into his face, she saw the blood stain his forehead. She had staked on the right chance, yet the risk was not past. Her game was the game of bluff, but its success depended upon the man with whom she had to deal. "I do not understand what you are talking about," he said. "I dare say I haven’t made my meaning clear," answered Joan, half rising. "Perhaps I’d better explain to my solicitor, and get him to write a letter----" "You are nothing more nor less than a common blackmailer," Lord Northmuir exclaimed, bringing down his white hand on the arm of his chair. "I may be nothing less, but I am a good deal more than a common one," retorted Joan, surer of her ground. "I will prove that, if you force me to do it." "Who are you?" he broke out abruptly. "I am a Woman Who Knows," she replied. "There was another Woman Who Knew. She called herself Gone. She is dead, and I have come. I have come to stay." "Don’t you understand that I can hand you over to the police?" demanded Lord Northmuir, with difficulty controlling his voice so that it could not be heard by possible listeners outside the door. "Yes; and I understand that I can hand your secret over to the police. They would know how to use it." He flushed again, and Joan saw that her daring shot had told. For the instant he had no answer ready, and she seized the opportunity to speak once more. "You can do better for yourself than hand me over to the police. There need be no trouble, if you will realise that I am not a common person, and not to be treated as such." "Again I ask: Who are you?" he cried. Joan risked another shot in the dark. "Can’t you make a guess?" she asked, with a malicious suggestion of hidden meaning in her tone. An expression of horror and surprise passed over Lord Northmuir’s handsome face, devastating it as a marching tornado devastates a landscape. It was evident that he had "made a guess," and been thunderstruck by its answer. Joan’s curiosity was so strongly roused that it touched physical pain. Almost, she would have been ready to give one of her pretty fingers to know the secret. "Do you still wish to ask questions?" she inquired. "Heaven help me, no! What is it that you want?" "I have told you already. If I insisted on all I have a right to claim, you would not be where you are."