"I do not understand," I said dully. I did not. His words had set my heart fluttering so that I could for the moment take in only one idea--that here was a new hope of life. "It is very simple," he resumed, speaking slowly. "Certain plans of mine require that I should get your friend the Duchess conveyed back to England. But for you I should have succeeded before this. In what you have hindered me, you can now help me. You have their confidence and great influence with them. All I ask is that you will use that influence so that they may be at a certain place at a certain hour. I will contrive the rest. It shall never be known, I promise you, that you----" "Betrayed them!" "Well, gave me some information," he said lightly, puffing away my phrase. "No. Betrayed them!" I persisted. "Put it so, if you please," he replied, shrugging his shoulders and raising his eyebrows. "What is in a word?" "You are the tempter himself, I think!" I cried in bitter rage--for it _was_ bitter--bitter, indeed, to feel that new-born hope die out. "But you come to me in vain. I defy you!" "Softly! softly!" he answered with calmness. Yet I saw a little pulse beating in his cheek that seemed to tell of some emotion kept in subjection. "It frightens you at first," he said. "But listen. You will do them no harm, and yourself good. I shall get them anyway, both the Duchess and her husband; though, without your aid, it will be more difficult. Why, help of that kind is given every day. They need never know it. Even now there is one of whom you little dream who has----" "Silence!" I cried fiercely. "I care not. I defy you!" I could think of only one thing. I was wild with rage and disappointment. His words had aggravated the pain of every regret, every clinging to life I felt. "Go!" I cried. "Go and leave me, you villain!" "If I do leave you," he said, fixing his eyes on me, "it will be, my friend--to death." "Then so be it!" I answered wildly. "So be it! I will keep my honor." "Your honor!" The mask dropped from his face, and he sneered as he rose from his seat. A darker scowl changed and disfigured his brow, as he lost hope of gaining me. "Your honor? Where will it be by to-night?" he hissed, his eyes glowering down at me. "Where a week hence, when you will be cast into a pit and forgotten? Your honor, fool? What is the honor of a dead man? Pah! But die, then, if you will have it so! Die, like the brainless brute you are! And rot, and be forgotten!" he concluded passionately. They were terrible words; more terrible I know now than either he or I understood then. They so shook me that when he was gone I crouched trembling on my pallet, hiding my face in a fit of horror--taking no heed of my jailers or of appearances. "Die and be forgotten! Die and be forgotten!" The doom rang in my ears.