His back was to the door, but Delia could see his face in the mirror; he was looking down, nor did he turn or move at her entrance. He was quietly dressed, yet there was ostentation about his person, that ostentation from which he was never entirely free; he wore many jewels; he was like his house, of a cold, splendid appearance, a showy somberness, the magnificence of gaiety with no heart behind it; and as his correct manner often had an underlying brutality in it, so his beauty owned a lurking coarseness that only the usual coldness of his demeanor concealed. But now, as he looked down and she stared at his face in the mirror, she saw the expression of it; a heavy sullenness a fierce impatience barely under control. He stood perfectly still, as if he did not know that she was there, or was indifferent to her presence, and she remained a foot inside the door, staring at him. At last he lifted his eyes and the blue of them was painfully vivid in his flushed face; he looked at her image in the mirror and there their glance met. Then he turned slowly. “It is strange for you to come here,” he said moodily. “I wonder, madam, what you can have to say to me?” “Do you wonder, Sir John Dalrymple?” answered Delia with a white hard face. “I come to ask you if you have those papers.” He looked at her curiously. “Have you those papers?” she repeated, holding herself very still. “We could not tell—there was ash on the floor—that night—of burnt paper—” For all her terrible effort at calm, her voice failed her; Sir John spoke abruptly: “I have all the information; all the papers relating to your plot against His Majesty,” he said. “I thought you knew.” “I guessed,” answered Delia slowly. “And you have not used your information yet?” “Not yet.” “I have come to ask you to give those papers back to me,” she said faintly. The Master of Stair smiled. “You are very confident, my fair Jacobite,” he said disdainfully. “Those papers were not lightly got—” She lifted her eyes with more steadiness. “No,” she said, “you paid deep enough for them, did you not, Sir John Dalrymple? You stopped at nothing.” “I do for my cause what you do for yours,” he answered coldly. “And this time I win.” “Still I have come to ask you to give me back those papers.” “You are astonishingly simple,” said the Master of Stair. “So you have found me—have you not?” she answered wildly, “a very fool, Sir John Dalrymple, to follow once the very careless lifting of your finger, and fool enough now to think you have some honor—some feeling—some pity for what you have so wantonly destroyed. Those papers stand for the lives—the honor—of thousands, and you stole them.” She put her hand to her side and came a step forward. “By all the lies you told me,” she said, “give back to me what you stole.” “The papers?” he asked quietly. “My brother—” said Delia, “is not in your power to restore—he is dead—”