She looked up at the double rank of horsemen. A sudden vivid flash of feeling passed over her features. Her breath came with a little pant. "Ah, if I could ride with you!" she said fiercely. "If I could do more than wait!" The color mounted to her cheeks, to her brow. A new note sounded in her voice. "If they show fight--these men? If, rather than lose the child, he"--her voice sank unsteadily for a moment--"does him an injury? You would not spare him?" He smiled a little wearily. "So you distrust me still?" he asked. "Why should I spare him? Because, to my shame, we are of one blood?" Mr. Van Arlen's thin hand rose in deprecation. "We can leave this matter confidently in Captain Aylmer's hands," he said. "We have only the one thing to think of--the child." "No!" she cried vehemently. "I want the child, but I want more than that. I want retribution. I want Landon in the dust. I want him made to feel, as I feel. The child is much, but he is not all. Have you forgotten the last eight years of my sister's life? Do you remember what she has undergone and still has to undergo if the father of her son wins this trick, as my heart tells me he will win it? I want vengeance. I want every chance to grasp it seized. I should not hesitate, where his kinsman might." Aylmer nodded gravely. "I understand," he said quietly. "Perhaps it is natural. But you keep forgetting the one thing--that I work for my own reward. Even pity would be a frail barrier between me and that." Watching her keenly, he saw a quiver of repulsion tremble about her lips, but it did not stay. She set them rather into grimness. She looked at him keenly, debatingly, indeed, as if she weighed his words and sought to set a value on them. "Yes," she said, and there was a breathlessness in her tone as if she slurred words which she did not dare to let herself hear. "I, too, understand. And my father would consider no price too high for the service which won back his grandchild, and removed the menace of Landon's existence from our lives." Van Arlen bowed unconsciously--his courteous, instinctive inclination of assent. "Such a service would be beyond price or reward," he said quietly. "We could only do our best." But there was a queerly puzzled look in his eyes as they wandered from Aylmer to his daughter's face. He frowned a little, still unconsciously, in the throes of an obvious bewilderment. Aylmer looked at him once, swiftly, speculatively, and then turned steadily towards Claire. "And you?" he asked quietly. She did not flinch; she did not even show, this time, any sign of repulsion. The note in her voice now was exasperation, the nervous defiance of one confronting an intolerable situation from which there was no escape. "I? I should think as my father thinks," she said coolly. She turned as she spoke and looked impatiently at the line of waiting horsemen. Aylmer nodded.