Mrs. Yale tiptoed from the room with ostentatious discretion. “I wired to you,” said the girl at last, “because I wanted to see you.” He nodded. “These people weren’t worrying you, were they?” he asked; “because you need not----” “I know!” she said hastily. “I know! But I’m afraid of what they will do; that they will force me to go out as witness against you. But I will never tell,” she said. “Never! never!” Talham was looking at her in perturbation. It was a new Yvonne Yale he saw; such a one as he had never dreamt of. She took his breath away; he felt himself shaking from head to foot, and at that moment he cursed what he thought was a recurrence of malarial fever. But there was no malarial germ in Talham’s veins at that moment. There was something within her that spoke to him, some message which went out in vibrant waves and shook the very centre of life within him. For the first time in his life, Talham was speechless. He could say nothing; his tongue refused its duty, and Yvonne Yale was in no better case. For her throat had gone dry and husky; it sounded queerly hoarse when she spoke, and she was short of breath, though she had made no recent or unusual exertion. “Captain Talham,” she managed to say, “I wanted to tell you something.… That is why I sent for you. It is a very extraordinary thing I want to say. Suppose they arrest you?” He shook his head. Even that possibility did not lend him words. “Suppose they arrest you,” she went on in her new, breathless way, with her eyes shining and moist, and her lips parted because of the very physical discomfort of breathing. “Suppose they ask me to go into the witness-box to testify against you… there is a law in England, do you know it--that no--no----” Again she stopped; the words were so difficult and so impossible. “There is a law in England,” she went on again, “that a wife cannot testify against her husband.” The last words were in a whisper. For a moment their eyes met. He held them for a breathing space---- CHAPTER XV. SOO WHO CAME BACK. When De Costa went back to his house he was determined at all costs to revenge himself upon the man who had slighted him, and who had brought such misery to his son. He was prepared to brave any consequences--for an angry man is neither logical nor reasonable, and until his temper cooled he was wilfully blind to the danger which he himself might incur through the publicity of a trial. That was his mood when he reached the gloomy house in Kensington. Over a frugal dinner he reviewed all the happenings of the past few weeks, and bitterly cursed his luck. Yet the planning and the scheming of years had not altogether ended in nought. Armed with the information which he was able to give them, his exploration parties would soon be on their way to Mount Li. The books which were open to Tillizinni were open equally to him. Within a rough radius he also had located the mountain of the Emperor.