He felt himself desperate and bewildered, like a man being pushed to the edge of a precipice, step by step. But those black eyes held and compelled him on. He scarcely knew what he was saying. “And are these papers all his? What have you been doing with them?” “My Lord told me to sort them.” The words were drawn out against his own will. “And those in your hand--on the chair. What are they?” Ralph made one more violent effort to regain the mastery. “If you were not a woman, Mistress Atherton, I should tell you you were insolent.” Not a ripple troubled those strong eyes. “Tell me, Mr. Torridon, what are they?” He stood silent and furious. “I will tell you what they are,” she said; “they are my Lord’s secrets. Is it not so? And you were about to burn them. Oh! Ralph, is it not so?” Her voice had a tone of entreaty in it. He dropped his eyes, overcome by the passion that streamed from her. “Is it not so?” she cried again. “Do you wish me to do so?” he said amazed. His voice seemed not his own; it was as if another spoke for him. He had the same sensation of powerlessness as once before when she had lashed him with her tongue in the room downstairs. “Wish you?” she cried. “Why, yes; what else?” He lifted his eyes to hers; the room seemed to have grown darker yet in those few minutes. He could only see now a shadowed face looking at him; but her bright passionate eyes shone out from it and dominated him. Again he spoke, in spite of himself. “I shall not burn them,” he said. “Shall not? shall not?” “I shall not,” he said again. There was silence. Ralph’s soul was struggling desperately within him. He put out his hand mechanically and took up the papers once more, as if to guard them from this fierce, imperious woman. Beatrice’s eyes followed the movement; and then rested once more on his face. Then she spoke again, with a tense deliberateness that drove every word home, piercing and sharp to the very centre of his spirit. “Listen,” she said, “for this is what I came to say. I know what you are thinking--I know every thought as if it were my own. You tell yourself that it is useless to burn those secrets; that there are ten thousand more--enough to cast my lord. I make no answer to that. “You tell yourself that you can only save yourself by giving them up to his enemies. I make no answer to that. “You tell yourself that it will be known if you destroy them--that you will be counted as one of His Highness’s enemies. I make no answer to that. And I tell you to burn them.” She came a step nearer. There was not a yard between them now; and the fire of her words caught and scorched him with their bitterness.