He moved a step nearer to her and gazed down on her with a look which made her lower her sunny audacious eyes. “You had more money than this from Massarene?” Regaining her courage, and remembering that Katherine Massarene had probably sent her all her other signatures, she rose and faced him, throwing her fresh cigarette on the table. “I do not admit that you have the smallest right to interrogate me. There is no one living who has. Marry his daughter, and you and she can look over his old check-books together. You are my children’s keeper, but you are not mine, and I entirely refuse to answer your insults.” It was clear, she reflected, that Massarene had told him nothing except the facts concerning the diamonds. He might flounder about in a sea of conjecture, and make himself as wretched as ever he pleased; she was not so simple as to confess to him. He stood above her, and his hands fell heavily on her shoulders and held her as in a vice. “You had more money than this from Massarene?” She was silent. He still held her motionless, and a thrill of intense physical fear passed through her. “You gave yourself to that brute for lucre?” She was silent. “If I wrong you, look me in the face and say so.” He waited; still holding her motionless. She tried to lift her eyes and look at him; she had never before quailed before any duplicity, never before been unequal to the demands which any necessity for falsehood put upon her. But now, for once, she dared not meet the eyes of this man whose lifelong affection she had abused, and whose family she had dishonored. For once she could not lie; for once her defiant audacity failed her; for once, for a brief passing moment, she saw herself as he would see her could he know all. Standing before him, in his grasp, her head drooped, her whole form trembled, her eyelids closed; she dared not meet his gaze. He understood. He released and thrust her from him. “Would to God our mother had never borne you!” He grew pale as ashes; for the moment he had difficulty to restrain himself from striking to the ground this woman who had dishonored his race. She took her coat off the table and turned away. “Take me to the boat,” she said imperiously. “I scarcely suppose you want your crew to see that we have quarrelled?” He opened the door of the cabin. “Be so good as to accompany the duchess, Mr. Evans,” he said to his skipper; and he went back into the cabin and closed and bolted the door. The faint, sweet scent of wild-rose essence was on the air and on the table where her coat had been lying. He dropped into the chair where she had sat, and, leaning his head on his hands, sobbed like a child. She went back over the harbor-water talking pleasantly with Evans. “My brother grows such a hermit,” she said to him. “It is a great pity that he avoids society. He is becoming quite morose.”