"First person singular, please! Marise hasn't spoken." "Damn you!" broke out Severance, at the end of his tether, and for once reckless of consequences. "You refuse to let her go--you refuse equally to leave her." "That's so," said Garth, with an exaggerated nasal twang which made Severance want to kill him for his insolence. He started forward, itching to strike; but something he saw in Garth's eyes brought him to a standstill. That confounded tooth episode was always "throwing itself up at him," so to speak! Fortunately, however, he remembered something at that instant--a weapon which he had almost overlooked, though it was within his grasp. He calmed himself with a kind of mental and physical stiffening. "If you don't intend to carry out your agreement--I insist, _your agreement_--! why have you brought that secretary girl, Miss Marks, all the way from New York to El Toyar Hotel?" he hurled at Garth. "When I heard she was there and that you were constantly riding over from your place to see her, I supposed it was done on purpose to give Marise an easy chance to get her divorce. As it is----" "As it is," Garth cut him short, "the affair is not your business." "It's Marise's business, if it _doesn't_ mean what I thought." "Then let her attend to it. She's quite capable of doing that," said Garth. "And now, unless you can produce a million dollars at sight, or still better, two million, don't you think you'd be wise to blow back to your hotel? It'll soon be too dark to walk." Severance turned furiously to the pale girl. "Marise--can you stand by and see me ordered away like this?" She looked at him with a strange look which he could not read at all. "This is his house, Tony," she answered, in an odd, dull voice. "Not mine." "I think you'd best go, for your own sake," said Garth. "But come back, of course, when you've got the money. If we're here then, we'll be glad to see you." Severance turned without another word, even to Marise, and walked away as he had come, passing through the drawing-room. Garth started to follow, but Marise ran to him and stopped him with a small, ice-cold hand on his arm. "Why are you going after Lord Severance?" she whispered, her lips dry. "Only to see that he doesn't lose himself somewhere in the house and hide under a table or sofa," Garth explained. Her hand dropped. She let him go. There was no fear of anything melodramatic, she saw. Yet she was not relieved. She felt as if she had some black, hollow, worn-out thing in her breast instead of a heart. It was heavy and useless, and hardly beat. "That horrid girl!" she said half aloud when Garth had gone. "I always knew, really, she would be here. I believe he _did_ give her the jewels, and Mothereen wangled them away from her somehow. He's pretending to follow Tony, and see him out. But he doesn't mean to come back here to me." As she thought this, Garth came back. CHAPTER XXXVI STUMBLING IN THE DARK