“They would not allow me to sever my bonds,” she continued, speaking in the same intense tones. “Once I thought I had succeeded, and hidden myself away from them, I had taken a situation as a shop assistant. Somehow, they tracked me down. One of the gang went to the proprietor, and representing himself as a police official, warned him that he had a thief in his service, a girl who had lately come out of gaol. It was a lie. I have deserved prison many times, but luck has kept me out of it; but it was a lie that served its purpose. I was dismissed there and then, turned out into the street with the few miserable francs I had saved out of my poor wages. My mother was waiting near by to take me back. I think in a way she pitied me, but she told me it was useless struggling against them; they would never let me go. I was too useful to them.” “Your natural advantages proved, no doubt, a great asset to them,” remarked the detective. “Your appearance made you an ideal decoy.” “Yes, good looks are not invariably a blessing,” said the beautiful young woman with a melancholy smile. “Had I been an ordinary-looking girl, they would have allowed me to remain in that humble shop, and troubled their heads no further about me. They were the cause of my being devoted to a life of evil by which I enriched others more than myself. But the greatest curse of all which they brought upon me was my association with the man you lately called upon, my husband, Bertram Edwards.” Her voice, as she spoke the name, was full of passion and hatred. Grewgus guessed now why she had called upon him. “You know something about him, a great deal too much for his comfort, but you cannot know the utter callousness of his brutal nature. Stormont was hard and ruthless in a way, where he encountered opposition, but he had his good points, he was genial, he was generous. If you knew how to handle him, you could get on well with him. The same might be said of John Whitehouse, who for a long time has passed as my uncle, although there is not the most remote relationship between us. But after the first few months of glamour were over, I could never find a single redeeming quality in Edwards. I think the man had all the vices it was possible to amalgamate in a single temperament.” “You were in love with this man, then, when you married him?” “Passionately,” was the reply. “Nobody could have been more successful than he in masking a vile nature under a prepossessing exterior. But even in the early days of our honeymoon he showed the cloven hoof. During the whole of our married existence my life has been one long experience of infamy, insult, brutality and outrage. And the love I bore him has turned to a hatred so intense that I would risk anything to procure him the punishment he deserves.” So, when she had shown Wraysbury the bruise on her arm, and told him her husband was a brute and a bully, she had been speaking the truth, thought Grewgus.