"What if I secure both?" he retorted, gratified by the effect he had produced. "This man is a traitor and has earned a traitor’s death. Although I may not have found what I sought, I _have_ found papers that will send him to the gallows, and give me a claim to the gratitude of the government. Do not trouble further about him, his fate is sealed." "And how if another claimant, perhaps far stronger, should spring up in his place? How if he leaves a widow?" suggested Prue. "One, for example, able and willing to pursue his claim?" "I am not uneasy about that," he replied, but his tone was less confident than his words. "I have the best of reasons for knowing that he is not married." "And you think that having no wife and leaving no—heir—to his claim (you acknowledge that he has a claim) it will cease with his death, because there is no one to pursue it?" "My dear Lady Prudence, a lawyer could not have put it more clearly! That is exactly his position; I think mine is pretty safe, even if those redoubtable documents should still be in existence. It will then be merely a matter of money—some one will bleed me more or less copiously—but that will be the end of the trumped-up claim of Captain—Freemantle." "Well, Lord Beachcombe," said Prue, smiling up into his face, "now I ask you, as a favor to me, to liberate Captain Freemantle, and to molest him no further. I will answer for it that he will leave the country immediately and abandon his claim. Surely, you will not refuse a favor that is so hard to ask and so easy to grant!" Beachcombe laughed unpleasantly. "Come, dear Viscountess," he said, and his tone, though bland, was tinged with insolence, "I know of old your thirst for adventure, but surely it has been slaked by the romantic episode of the queen’s necklace and the mysterious spiriting-away of your cavalier—your Knight of the Road—by Barbara Sweeting! The excitement of the affair has evaporated; its novelty has staled. Waste no more of your enchanting wiles on so sorry a subject. I have made up my mind, and even for the sake of the most charming of women, I will not change it." "Yet I think I may induce you," said Prue undauntedly, "because to my certain knowledge Captain de Cliffe has a wife and those precious papers are in her possession. She knows their value, too, and will only give them up on her own terms. If you will not grant _me_ this gentleman’s life as a favor—will you make a bargain with _her_?" Astonishment and doubt struggled with Lord Beachcombe’s self-command, but he kept an unmoved face, although an inkling of the truth began to force itself upon him. Not the whole incredible truth, of course, but enough to make him suspect that Lady Prudence Brooke was more than commonly interested in the subject of their discussion. "And what might be the terms of the bargain?" he demanded, after a brief hesitation.