"Well, what the devil is it?" Dacre spoke with the exasperation of a man who knows himself to be at a disadvantage. "If you want to know my opinion, I regard such conduct as damned intrusive at such a time. But if you've any decent excuse let's hear it!" He had never adopted that tone to Monck before, but he had been rudely jolted out of his usually complacent attitude, and he resented Monck's presence. Moreover, an unpleasant sense of inferiority had begun to make itself felt. There was something judicial about Monck--something inexorable and condemnatory--something that aroused in him every instinct of self-defence. But Monck met his blustering demand with the utmost calm. It was as if he held him in a grip of iron intention from which no struggles, however desperate, could set him free. He took an envelope from the folds of his ragged raiment. "I believe you have heard me speak of my brother Bernard," he said, "chaplain of Charthurst Prison." Dacre nodded. "The fellow who writes to you every month. Well? What of him?" Monck's steady fingers detached and unfolded a letter. "You had better read for yourself," he said, and held it out. But curiously Dacre hung back as if unwilling to touch it. "Can't you tell me what all the fuss is about?" he said irritably. Monck's hand remained inflexibly extended. He spoke, a jarring note in his voice. "Oh yes, I can tell you. But you had better see for yourself too. It concerns you very nearly. It was written in Charthurst Prison nearly six weeks ago, where a woman who calls herself your wife is undergoing a term of imprisonment for forgery." "Damnation!" Ralph Dacre actually staggered as if he had received a blow between the eyes. But almost in the next moment he recovered himself, and uttered a quivering laugh. "Man alive! You are not fool enough to believe such a cock-and-bull story as that!" he said. "And you have come all this way in this fancy get-up to tell me! You must be mad!" Monck was still holding out the letter. "You had better see for yourself," he reiterated. "It is damnably circumstantial." "I tell you it's an infernal lie!" flung back Dacre furiously. "There is no woman on this earth who has any claim on me--except Stella. Why should I read it? I tell you it's nothing but damned fabrication--a tissue of abominable falsehood!" "You mean to deny that you have ever been through any form of marriage before?" said Monck slowly. "Of course I do!" Dacre uttered another angry laugh. "You must be a positive fool to imagine such a thing. It's preposterous, unheard of! Of course I have never been married before. What are you thinking of?" Monck remained unmoved. "She has been a music-hall actress," he said. "Her name is--or was--Madelina Belleville. Do you tell me that you have never had any dealings whatever with her?" Dacre laughed again fiercely, scoffingly. "You don't imagine that I would marry a woman of that sort, do you?" he said.