"Stop. How can you prove all this?" "Oh, I can prove it right enough. But I don't want to go--to--such lengths." Lady Wyke burst into tears and took out her handkerchief. "I wish you wouldn't force me to--to behave in this way. Oh, my darling, I love you with all my heart and soul, I want to--to----" Edwin sprang up as she stumbled forward, with the idea of throwing her arms around his neck. "Don't go on acting like a fool," he said, sternly. "If you must talk, talk sensibly. Otherwise I shall leave immediately." "I'll send the police after you," she threatened, furiously. "Do so. You'll be no nearer to gaining your object." Then Lady Wyke broke down. "Oh, Edwin! Edwin! Edwin!" Purposely cool and pointedly rude Craver resumed his seat, lighted a fresh cigarette and looked at her critically. "I wouldn't cry if I were you, Lady Wyke. You can't afford to do so at your age without spoiling your face." "Oh, you brute!" "Quite so; and, knowing that I am a brute, why, try to force me to become your husband?" "Oh, I don't know." She dabbed her eyes carefully with her handkerchief. "Perhaps to make you smart for having treated me so insolently. I won't give you up to that girl." "There is no question of giving up. I am hers; I never was yours. Come, Lady Wyke, don't you think we had better discuss matters calmly." "What matters?" she asked, wilfully dense. "Well; the accusation, for one thing." Lady Wyke did not reply. She was thinking how best to get the better of this iceberg. Threats did not move him; passion did not appeal to him; tears had no effect. Strange to say, the more he held out the more she admired him. However, if she wished to gain him against his will, and that she intended to manage, being so infatuated, the sole thing to do was to talk business. He must be forced to see that she had the upper hand, and if he did grasp that fact he might yield. But even then she was not very sure of victory. "Let us talk calmly," said Lady Wyke, lighting a fresh cigarette. "I want to marry you, and I mean to have you. That is not an easy thing for a woman to say to the man she loves." Edwin admitted this, and suggested that she should lay her cards on the table forthwith. "Then I shall show you my hand." With an ironical smile she fumbled under the cushion and produced a letter deliberately to pass over to him. "It's a copy," she observed, while he read it. "You see, I can't trust you with the original." "Well, perhaps it is as wise not to do so. H'm!" Edwin glanced over the four or five lines and nodded. "This is my letter to Sir Hector saying that I was coming down to see him that night at seven o'clock. I wrote this letter--the original one, I mean--in answer to one which your husband wrote me asking me to call. How did you get the original of this?"