She drew back as she might have done from some unclean animal. She knew that he was telling the truth. There might be extenuating circumstances. The real truth might have quite a different sound, spoken in different words; but there was enough of the truth in it, as Victor Durnovo placed it before her, to condemn Maurice before the world. “Now will you marry me?” he sneered. “No!” Quick as thought she had seen the only loophole--the only possible way of meeting this terrible accusation. He laughed; but there was a faint jangle of uneasiness in his laughter. “Indeed!” “Supposing,” said Jocelyn, “for one moment that there was a grain of truth in your fabrication, who would believe you? Who on this coast would take your word against the word of an English gentleman? Even if the whole story were true, which it is not, could you prove it? You are a liar, as well as a coward and a traitor! Do you think that the very servants in the stable would believe you? Do you think that the incident of the small-pox at Msala is forgotten? Do you think that all Loango, even to the boatmen on the beach, ignores the fact that you are here in Loango now because you are afraid to go through a savage country to the Simiacine Plateau as you are pledged to do? You were afraid of the small-pox once; there is something else that you are afraid of now. I do not know what it is, but I will find out. Coward! Go! Leave the house at once, before I call in the stable-boys to turn you out, and never dare to speak to me again!” Victor Durnovo recoiled before her, conscious all the while that she had never been so beautiful as at that moment. But she was something far above him--a different creation altogether. He never knew what drove him from that room. It was the fear of something that he did not understand. He heard her close the window after him as he walked away beneath the trees. She stood watching him--proud, cold, terrible in her womanly anger. Then she turned, and suddenly sank down upon the sofa, sobbing. But fortune decreed that she should have neither time to weep nor think. She heard the approaching footsteps of her old servant, and when the door was opened Jocelyn Gordon was reading a book, with her back turned towards the window. “That man Nala, miss, the paddle-maker, wants to see you.” “Tell him to go round to the verandah.” Jocelyn went out by the open window, and presently Nala came grinning towards her. He was evidently very much pleased with himself--held himself erect, and squinted more violently than usual. “I have been to Msala,” he said, with considerable dignity of manner. “Yes, and what news have you?”