"Because I had discovered that by marriage a woman follows her husband's nationality, so that if I married you I should at once become a British subject, and beyond the influence of French law," was her frank answer. "Don't you remember that while we were in the north two men called at Neate Street, made inquiries about us, and went away satisfied. They were agents of the French Police, and from what Mrs Williams told them they believed that you were my husband, therefore they went away, hesitating to apply for my arrest. So you see Vickers actually carried out his threat. Since the day after poor Arthur was killed Vickers has been in Germany to dispose of a quantity of stolen jewellery, therefore Domville had no opportunity of telling him the truth that you were posing as my husband, while your friend on his part deemed it to their interests to allow us both to remain in fear and in hiding. Of course I had no knowledge that Domville was aware of your having assumed the character of William Morton, and our position has all along been rendered the more perilous on that account. For us, however, it was most fortunate that Vickers has been abroad and that Domville kept his knowledge to himself. By your aid, Wilfrid, I was saved from those French agents, but now that the secret of Clipstone Street is out I fear that they may discover I am not married, and return. If they do," she sighed, "if they do, then I must stand in a criminal dock, and bear the scandal that these villains have heaped upon me in order to hold me as their unwilling accomplice. Ah! Wilfrid!" she gasped, terrified, "I shudder when I think of the awful doom of those unfortunate ones about whom I once gave secret information so innocently. It is horrible-- horrible," and she covered her drawn, haggard countenance with her slim, white hands. "Never shall I forget that moment when poor Arthur Rumbold fell dead at my feet--shot down mercilessly because he was in the act of revealing to me the terrible truth," she cried. "The memory of that ghastly moment lives ever within me--the dead face still stares at me, and I never seem able to get away from it. He had an intuition that his enemies, having found out that he had discovered the grim secret of the house in Clipstone Street, were following him with the intention of killing him in secret. They had obtained his photograph, and intended that he should die. Therefore, knowing that he was followed he had come, ill-dressed and disguised, by a circuitous route to Charlton Wood. Naturally the police, when they found him dead, believed him to be a tramp, while I, of course, was in hourly terror that the letters he had secured from Vickers's rooms and my miniature, which I knew he wore, would be found upon him, and thus connect me with the crime. In breathless dread I existed for days and days, and never knew until now that you had secured them prior to the arrival of the police."