His arms sank to his sides quite nervelessly. He uttered a faint exclamation of astonishment, almost instantly interrupted by a cough. He swayed there a moment, the cough increasing until it choked him. Then, suddenly limp, he pitched forward upon his face, and lay clawing and twitching at Sir Terence’s feet. Sir Terence himself, scarcely realising what had taken place, for the whole thing had happened within the time of a couple of heart-beats, stood quite still, amazed and awed, in a half-crouching attitude, looking down at the body of the fallen man. And then from above, ringing upon the deathly stillness, he caught a sibilant whisper: “What was that? ‘Sh!” He stepped back softly, and flattened himself instinctively against the wall; thence profoundly intrigued and vaguely alarmed on several scores he peered up at the windows of his wife’s room whence the sound had come, whence the sudden light had come which--as he now realised--had given him the victory in that unequal contest. Looking up at the balcony in whose shadow he stood concealed, he saw two figures there--his wife’s and another’s--and at the same time he caught sight of something black that dangled from the narrow balcony, and peered more closely to discover a rope ladder. He felt his skin roughening, bristling like a dog’s; he was conscious of being cold from head to foot, as if the flow of his blood had been suddenly arrested; and a sense of sickness overcame him. And then to turn that horrible doubt of his into still more horrible certainty came a man’s voice, subdued, yet not so subdued but that he recognised it for Ned Tremayne’s. “There’s some one lying there. I can make out the figure.” “Don’t go down! For pity’s sake, come back. Come back and wait, Ned. If any one should come and find you we shall be ruined.” Thus hoarsely whispering, vibrating with terror, the voice of his wife reached O’Moy, to confirm him the unsuspecting blind cuckold that Samoval had dubbed him to his face, for which Samoval--warning the guilty pair with his last breath even as he had earlier so mockingly warned Sir Terence--had coughed up his soul on the turf of that enclosed garden. Crouching there for a moment longer, a man bereft of movement and of reason, stood O’Moy, conscious only of pain, in an agony of mind and heart that at one and the same time froze his blood and drew the sweat from his brow. Then he was for stepping out into the open, and, giving flow to the rage and surging violence that followed, calling down the man who had dishonoured him and slaying him there under the eyes of that trull who had brought him to this shame. But he controlled the impulse, or else Satan controlled it for him. That way, whispered the Tempter, was too straight and simple. He must think. He must have time to readjust his mind to the horrible circumstances so suddenly revealed.