Her eyes, which were well opened, were quite the blue of steel, and rested directly upon him. “I, for instance, would let you make a scene with me anywhere you chose--in Bond Street--in Piccadilly--on the steps of Buckingham Palace, as I was getting out of my carriage to attend a drawing-room--and you would gain nothing you wanted by it--nothing. You may place entire confidence in that statement.” He stared back at her, momentarily half-magnetised, and then broke forth into a harsh half-laugh. “You are so damned handsome that nothing else matters. I'm hanged if it does!” and the words were an exclamation. He drew still nearer to her, speaking with a sort of savagery. “Cannot you see that you could do what you pleased with me? You are too magnificent a thing for a man to withstand. I have lost my head and gone to the devil through you. That is what I came to say.” In the few seconds of silence that followed, his breath came quickly again and he was even paler than before. “You came to me to say THAT?” asked Betty. “Yes--to say it before you drove me to other things.” Her gaze was for a moment even slightly wondering. He presented the curious picture of a cynical man of the world, for the time being ruled and impelled only by the most primitive instincts. To a clear-headed modern young woman of the most powerful class, he--her sister's husband--was making threatening love as if he were a savage chief and she a savage beauty of his tribe. All that concerned him was that he should speak and she should hear--that he should show her he was the stronger of the two. “Are you QUITE mad?” she said. “Not quite,” he answered; “only three parts--but I am beyond my own control. That is the best proof of what has happened to me. You are an arrogant piece and you would defy me if you stood alone, but you don't, and, by the Lord! I have reached a point where I will make use of every lever I can lay my hand on--yourself, Rosalie, Ughtred, Ffolliott--the whole lot of you!” The thing which was hardest upon her was her knowledge of her own strength--of what she might have allowed herself of flaming words and instant action--but for the memory of Rosy's ghastly little face, as it had looked when she cried out, “You must not think of me. Betty, go home--go home!” She held the white desperation of it before her mental vision and answered him even with a certain interested deliberateness. “Do you know,” she inquired, “that you are talking to me as though you were the villain in the melodrama?” “There is an advantage in that,” he answered, with an unholy smile. “If you repeat what I say, people will only think that you are indulging in hysterical exaggeration. They don't believe in the existence of melodrama in these days.” The cynical, absolute knowledge of this revealed so much that nerve was required to face it with steadiness. “True,” she commented. “Now I think I understand.”