“Yes, yes; but that was before I saw you. Now, I don’t care if you have killed half the people in Corinth, I want you all the same. You’ve bewitched me. You, a silly little slip of a girl, with no particular claim to beauty, except your big, mournful eyes, and your peach of a mouth! I’ll bring the smiles to that sad little face. Oh, Anita, I’m not a brute, and I do love you so. Give up your foolish fancy for Lockwood, for it is only a passing attraction. And he hasn’t any money, and he’s deeply in debt, and oh, I’m a thousand times a better catch!” “If you knew how you damaged your cause by talking like that—” the girl began, her eyes cold with scorn. “Then I won’t talk like that,” Trask said, humbly. “Only take me, Anita, and you can make me over to suit yourself. I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll read the books you want me to, I’ll get cultured and refined—and all that.” Anita almost laughed. “You are so funny,” she said. But this was a little too much for Trask’s self-love. “Funny, am I?” he stormed. “Funny! You’ll see how funny I am when I tell the police why you killed that man! You’ll see if I’m funny when I refuse the evidence that might help you out. When I keep still instead of speakin’ out in meetin’! You look here, Anita Austin, I hold you in the hollow of my hand, and don’t you forget it! You’ve got a deep dark secret—and though I don’t know quite all of it—I’ll know it soon. What M. Trask sets out to find out, he finds out. See? Now, do you want to tell me who you are—or not? Want to tell me who your father was? Your mother was a Truesdell—I’ll bet on that!” Miss Mystery’s face fell. Abject despair was written on every line of it. She glanced at Trask, and his own determined expression showed her that she could hope for nothing from him save on his own terms. And those terms were too hard for her. Just aware of loving Lockwood, just learning to know what love meant and how sweet it could be, just realizing, too, the awfulness of her own position, the dire necessity for secrecy, the terrible result of Trask’s revelations, should they be made, altogether Miss Mystery faced a dangerous crisis. “You say you’ll give me a week?” she said, at last, grasping at a hope of reprieve. Trask looked at her with curiosity. “What good’ll that do you? Better put yourself under my protection at once. Every day you lose is that much nearer discovery.” “All right, I’ll dare it! They won’t—won’t condemn me, anyhow.” “Ho, ho. Banking on your sex to save you! Well, honestly, I don’t really think they’d send a pretty girl like you to the chair, but a trial would convict you in the eyes of the world, even if twelve men were too soft-hearted to see you electrocuted. And there’d be imprisonment—” “Oh, hush! Mr. Trask, have you no pity?”