Julian Wyllard was livid with anger. He set down his cup with a hand that trembled like an aspen-leaf; he rose from his chair, and paced the grassy space in front of the arbour, backwards and forwards half a dozen times, before he uttered a word. And then, coming back to his wife, he looked at her with eyes dilated with jealous frenzy. "Why call him the son of your mother's old friend?" he exclaimed. "What need of so awkward and ambiguous a phrase? Why not call him your old lover? It is in that character you have thrown yourself upon him; it is as your old lover that you try to arouse his chivalry, that you urge him to do that which your husband's common sense revolted from. A husband is a reasoning animal, you know. He will only attempt the practical, the possible. But throw your glove to the lions, and your lover will leap into the arena and fight for it! And you take advantage of an unquenchable passion, of a despairing love, to attempt the solution of a problem to which the answer may be a rope round your cousin's neck." "You have no right to insult me as you have done," said Dora, pale as marble, but calm in her just indignation. "You know that I am your true wife, and that my friendship for Edward Heathcote and his for me is above suspicion. As for my cousin Bothwell, I know that he has been most unjustly suspected of a foul crime; and I will not rest till the true history of that crime has been discovered. Nothing but the discovery of the real murderer can ever set Bothwell right with his fellow-men." "Then he will have to remain in the wrong," answered Wyllard savagely. "The mystery which Distin's training and experience failed to fathom will never be brought to light by your knight-errant of The Spaniards." CHAPTER VIII. A VALUABLE ALLY. Edward Heathcote devoted his every thought to the task which he had taken upon himself. His first business must be to discover the name and history of the murdered girl. The clue in his possession was of the slightest; but he was not without a clue. First, there was the name and address of the baker on the biscuit-bag. This gave him an indication of the part of Paris in which the girl must have been living before she started for England; it also indicated that she had left Paris within a few days of her journey westward. But he had a second clue, and a much better one. Within a week after the adjourned inquest, a farm-labourer had brought him a large oval silver locket, which he had picked up in the gorge where the girl fell. The spot lay a little way off the direct path to the man's work, and morbid curiosity had impelled him to go and examine the place in the early morning, before his daily labour began.