Certainly her demeanour was most mysterious, and I stood there, facing her, utterly bewildered. The expression in her dear face was quite uncanny. Once again I begged her to tell me something--however slight--regarding what had occurred to her. I told her of our tireless search; of the eager hue and cry; of the publication of her portrait, and of the offered reward for any information. "Ah!" she replied, with a strange, faint smile, as though of triumph almost. "All that was to no effect. The precautions taken were far too complete. Nobody could have found me--for I was in a living grave." "Yes," I said, hoping that she would reveal to me something more, however vague. "Tell me about it, darling. Do, Roseye." "Tell you!" she echoed with angry resentment, putting me from her firmly and staring at me. "No, never!" Then a second later she turned towards the curtained window and shrieked: "Ah! look!--that accursed woman again! Why do you allow her to come here--if you love me, Claude!" "She is not here," I declared firmly. "It is all your silly imagination!" "She is!" cried my love wildly. "You are lying to me! She's there! Over there! Kill her--Claude--or she will kill you--ah! _that Woman with the Leopard's Eyes_!" CHAPTER FOURTEEN. FALSE OR TRUE? One bright crisp afternoon in mid-December, Roseye, wrapped warmly in her furs, sat beside me in the car as we sped through Leatherhead on our way out to Burford Bridge, where we had decided to have tea. In the grey wintry light the landscape had become gloomy and depressing. Yet my love chatted merrily as we sped along. Since that well-remembered evening at my rooms when she had made her sudden reappearance on my threshold from nowhere, the days had been very dark and terribly anxious ones. After her refusal to tell me anything, I had taken her home, where her sudden arrival had been as a thunderbolt to her parents. But alas! her overstrained brain had then given way, and for three weeks she had remained in bed under the care of Sir Charles Needham, one of the greatest mental specialists in Harley Street. Thanks to his skill, she had slowly recovered--very slowly it seemed to me. A dozen times I had chatted with Sir Charles, and he had admitted to me that the case was not only most unusual, but almost unique. He could not obtain from her any lucid account of what had occurred after she had left home on that fatal morning. She had contradicted herself so many times. Any reference to inventions, to electricity, to trains, to Zeppelins, or to women, sent her into fierce paroxysms of anger. Her attitude was most mysterious. In fact her adventures during the time she had been missing were enveloped in a dark cloud of mystery which, even Barton himself, was unable to penetrate.