"No--yes--no. I don't know--I don't think I do. It isn't that. I didn't care for Sir Roger. I was mean enough and shabby enough to consent to marry him for his wealth and title. But I was such a little fool! Sir Roger was a thousand times too good for me, and he and I are both well out of that matter. But that is no excuse for such a villainous deed." "True. Nothing can excuse it. But you must be merciful. The man loved you passionately." "Mr. Ingelow," opening her eyes wild and wide, "are you pleading Doctor Oleander's case?" "No, Mollie--the case of the man who loved you so madly, so recklessly, that the thought of your being another's--another's whom you did not love--drove him to insanity, and to the commission of an insane deed." "And that man was Doctor Oleander." "It was not!" "Mr. Ingelow!" "No, Mollie; never Guy Oleander. He hadn't the pluck. He never cared for you enough." "But he did it twice." "Once only--this last time--stung, goaded into it by the lash of Mrs. Walraven's waspish tongue. But he is not the man who married you, whoever that man may be. At least," cooling down suddenly, as he saw the full blue eyes fixed upon him with piercing intentness, "I don't believe it." "What do you believe, then, Mr. Ingelow?" Mollie said, slowly and suspiciously. "That when you made Miriam the confidante of your story, on a certain night in your bedroom, Mrs. Carl Walraven overheard you." "Impossible!" "Perhaps so; but you'll find that's the way of it. She listened and heard, and patched it up with Mr. Rashleigh's dinner-table tale, and confabulated with her cousin, and put him up to this last dodge. She saw your advertisement in the paper, and understood it as well as you did, and Doctor Oleander was there in waiting. You committed one unaccountable blunder. You appointed ten for the nocturnal interview, and were at the place of the tryst at half past nine. How do you explain that little circumstance?" "It seems to me, Mr. Ingelow," said Mollie, "that you must be a sorcerer. How do you know all this?" "Partly from Miriam, partly from my own inborn ingenuity, as a Yankee, in guessing. Please answer my question." "I didn't know I was before time. It was later than half past nine by my watch when I quitted the house. I remember listening for the clocks to strike ten as I reached Fourteenth Street." "You didn't hear them?" "No." "Of course not. Your watch was tampered with, and that confirms my suspicion of Mrs. Walraven. Believe me, Mollie, a trap was laid for you, and you were caught in it. You never met 'Black Mask' that night." "If I thought so!" Mollie cried, clasping her hands. "You will find it so," Hugh Ingelow said, very quietly. "Let that be Doctor Oleander's punishment. Make him confess his fraud--make him confess Mrs. Walraven aided and abetted him--to-night." "How can I?"