“And have you no fear, Mistress Clerke? Does your instinct teach you no tremor?” He moved a pace nearer and glanced down upon her. “Do you not see, proud woman? Have you no trembling, no terror at the sight of me? Am I so gentle, so tractable, so ingenuous that you can defy me with impunity? You are in my power. There is no one to say me nay. What is there to prevent me doing with you as I will?” She had not moved back from him the distance of a pace. And it was his eye that first fell before hers. “You will doubtless do your will,” she said, evenly. “But I cannot find it in my heart to fear you, monsieur.” And the quietude of her reliance paled his mock brutality into a mere silly effusiveness. “At the sight of you, monsieur,” she continued, “there is little room for fear in my breast. No, even if you should strike me down here upon this foreign, friendless deck, I believe that I could raise no hand or voice in protest.” “Madame!” he said. “It is true. You are powerless to offend. Why, your threats are mere empty vaunts, monsieur! Even in this dusky light I can see it in your eyes. You are clean of evil intent as a babe unborn.” Bras-de-Fer bowed his head. “Oh, let me right the great wrong that has been done--” “It is impossible--” “When you learn-- Listen, oh, listen, monsieur!” she cried, passionately, as he moved away. “When you learn that I have left London for you; that I have given up all I possessed that a great wrong might be righted, a great martyrdom ended, you will no longer refuse me.” The words came tumbling forth any way from her lips in the mad haste that he might hear before he was gone out of earshot. And as he paused to listen, fearfully: “Yes, yes, monsieur, I have learned,” she cried again. “I know. It is yours--it is all yours.” Bras-de-Fer turned his body towards her again, but as he faced her his head was still bowed in his shoulders and she could see no other sign of any emotion. The revelation that he had longed for, and feared because he longed for it so much, was made. The secret was out. However he planned and whatever guise of unfriendliness he took, the relations between himself and this woman were changed thenceforward. The struggle for the mastery was fierce as it was brief. And in that moment, no matter how changed his duty to himself and her, he resolved that she should have no sign of it. When he raised his head again to the lantern-light all trace of the storm that had passed over his spirit was gone. “It is too late, madame,” he muttered. “Too late. I stand by the cast of the die.” “You cannot know what you say, monsieur. If the estates do not go to you, they will go to no one. It is the end of the house of De Bresac. Your fortune, your titles, your honors--” “And my good name?” he asked, coldly. “Who will restore to me my good name? No. I shall not return to London, madame.”