"Why, how strangely and despondently you talk, Mr. Chisholm! From my hiding-place at the back of those curtains, I've been watching you this hour or more. Your nervousness has developed into madness, if you will permit me to criticise. Had it not been for my presence here you would by this time have taken your life. For what reason? Shall I tell you? Because, Mr. Chisholm, you are a coward. You are in terror of an exposure that you dare not face." "How do you know?" he cried fiercely, springing towards her in alarm. "Who told you?" "You told me yourself," she answered. "Your own lips denounced you." "What did I say? What foolish nonsense did I utter in my madness?" he demanded, the fact now being plain that she had heard all the wild words that had escaped him. The old colonel had warned him that this woman was not his friend. He reflected that, at all costs he must silence her. She paused for a few moments in hesitation. "Believing yourself to be here alone, you discussed aloud your secret in all its hideousness--the secret of your sin." "And if I did--what then?" he demanded defiantly. His courtliness towards her had been succeeded by an undisguised resentment. To think that she should have been brought into his house to act as eavesdropper, and to learn his secret! "Nothing, except that I am now in your confidence, and, having rescued you from an ignominious end, am anxious to become your friend," she answered in a quiet tone of voice. Her face was pale, but she was, nevertheless, firm and resolute. He was puzzled more than ever in regard to her. With his wild eyes full upon her, he tried to make out whether it was by design or by accident that she was there, locked in that room with him. That she was an inveterate novel-reader he knew, but her excuse that she had come there to obtain a book at so late an hour scarcely bore an air of probability. Besides, she had exchanged her smart dinner-gown for a dark stuff dress. No, she had spied upon him. The thought lashed him to fury. "To calculate the amount of profit likely to accrue to oneself as the result of a friend's misfortune is no sign of friendship," he said in a sarcastic voice. "No, Miss Mortimer, you have, by thus revealing your presence, prolonged my life by a few feverish minutes, but your words certainly do not establish the sincerity of your friendship. Besides," he added, "we scarcely know each other." "I admit that; but let us reconsider all the facts," she said, leaning a little toward him, across the back of a chair. "Your actions have shown that the matter is to you one of life or death. If so, it manifestly deserves careful and mature consideration."