“Dick Butler?” he said at last, and cried out: “I don’t believe a word of it! Ye’re lying, Tremayne.” “You have cause enough to hope so.” The captain was faintly scornful. “If it were true, Una would not have kept it from me. It was to me she would have come.” “The trouble with you, O’Moy, is that jealousy seems to have robbed you of the power of coherent thought, or else you would remember that you were the last man to whom Una could confide Dick’s presence here. I warned her against doing so. I told her of the promise you had been compelled to give the secretary, Forjas, and I was even at pains to justify you to her when she was indignant with you for that. It would perhaps be better,” he concluded, “if you were to send for Una.” “It’s what I intend,” said Sir Terence in a voice that made a threat of the statement. He strode stiffly across the room and pulled open the door. There was no need to go farther. Lady O’Moy, white and tearful, was discovered on the threshold. Sir Terence stood aside, holding the door for her, his face very grim. She came in slowly, looking from one to another with her troubled glance, and finally accepting the chair that Captain Tremayne made haste to offer her. She had so much to say to each person present that it was impossible to know where to begin. It remained for Sir Terence to give her the lead she needed, and this he did so soon as he had closed the door again. Planted before it like a sentry, he looked at her between anger and suspicion. “How much did you overhear?” he asked her. “All that you said about Dick,” she answered without hesitation. “Then you stood listening?” “Of course. I wanted to know what you were saying.” “There are other ways of ascertaining that without stooping to keyholes,” said her husband. “I didn’t stoop,” she said, taking him literally. “I could hear what was said without that--especially what you said, Terence. You will raise your voice so on the slightest provocation.” “And the provocation in this instance was, of course, of the slightest. Since you have heard Captain Tremayne’s story of course you’ll have no difficulty in confirming it.” “If you still can doubt, O’Moy,” said Tremayne, “it must be because you wish to doubt; because you are afraid to face the truth now that it has been placed before you. I think, Una, it will spare a deal of trouble, and save your husband from a great many expressions that he may afterwards regret, if you go and fetch Dick. God knows, Terence has enough to overwhelm him already.” At the suggestion of producing Dick, O’Moy’s anger, which had begun to simmer again, was stilled. He looked at his wife almost in alarm, and she met his look with one of utter blankness. “I can’t,” she said plaintively. “Dick’s gone.” “Gone?” cried Tremayne. “Gone?” said O’Moy, and then he began to laugh. “Are you quite sure that he was ever here?” “But--” She was a little bewildered, and a frown puckered her perfect brow. “Hasn’t Ned told you, then?”