Tor listened with a coolness which was a little disconcerting to the excited woman before him. Forewarned was forearmed in his case, and he evinced nothing but an amused incredulity in face or voice. ‘Indeed! this is most interesting. I had no idea such greatness loomed before me. Pray go on; it is like a chapter from Wilkie Collins. Isn’t it exciting, Miss Marjory?’ ‘Very. It always amuses me to see people make egregious blunders,’ answered Miss Marjory affably. ‘I hope Mrs. Belassis has a great deal more to tell us.’ Mrs. Belassis felt her face grow pale with rage. She had never before had any statement of hers treated with anything so like ridicule. ‘I have a good deal more to tell you,’ she answered, with suppressed savageness; ‘and you may thank me for great consideration that you hear it first through me, and not through a lawyer.’ ‘I am ready to thank you even for a fancied consideration,’ answered Tor quietly; ‘but let me tell you that I would much rather hear anything you may have to say from a lawyer than from you. I know how to deal with a man, and with a libel; but to a lady and a relative, and in my own house, it is difficult to find any suitable reply to whatever charges she may see fit to bring.’ ‘I am not a relative; and you are not in your own house—you know that as well as I.’ Miss Marjory lifted her eyebrows, shrugged her shoulders, and smiled a smile that was truly exasperating, as she glanced at Tor. The look said as plainly as words could do, ‘Is she mad?’ Mrs. Belassis, strong though she felt her cause, began to wish she had waited for a few proofs before making an attack. The ground under her feet was not secure enough to warrant an encounter with two such foes as she now saw before her. ‘I am quite ready to repudiate our relationship, now that I find it is as unwelcome to you as it is to me,’ said Tor coolly; ‘but I repeat once more, that in my own house I cannot answer in fitting terms a lady who chooses to insult me. If it is all the same to you, Mrs. Belassis, I would rather you let me hear whatever you have to say through your husband, or through a lawyer. If you have any charge to bring against me, as your words seem to imply, you had better have your case made out in the usual way.’ Mrs. Belassis knew that as matters stood at present she had no case; and the cool scorn of her adversary’s tone stung her to the quick. She _knew_ he was an impostor, yet she had no real evidence to bring forward. But she was not going to be silenced so easily. ‘I shall act as I choose, and speak as I choose, and when I choose,’ she answered angrily. ‘Bold and wicked as you are, I have my hand on the clue which will in the end bring shame and ruin upon you. Where is _your friend_, Torrington Torwood?’ ‘At sea, on a voyage for his health.’ ‘He is not. He is in England. He is at Ladywell. He is in this very house?’ ‘Indeed! If you are so well informed as to my friend’s movements, why come to me?’