"Ah! you were anxious to trap me!" cried Mr. Scarse, angrily. "Well, you know the truth now, and you can do nothing. I burned the crape scarf and I told Brenda I was the man Harold had seen. If you choose to make a scandal, I shall tell my story exactly as I have told it to you, and prove Robert's innocence. At the worst he can only be put under restraint again." "I don't wish to make any scandal," said the Dutchman, mildly, "more especially seeing that your daughter is to be my wife. You can rely on my silence if only on that account. But I'm glad I have heard this story now. I want to know who killed Malet." "That I can't say," said Mr. Scarse, gloomily. "But I suspect the wife!" "Lady Jenny!--and why?" "Robert had a note written to her saying his wife was dead--he brought it with him. He sent it up to her by a boy that same evening. Of course the boy thought that Robert was me." "I see!" cried Van Zwieten, with a shout. "Robert wanted to stir up Lady Jenny into killing her husband. He is not so crazy, to my thinking. But I don't see how the intelligence of the wife's death would achieve it," he added, shaking his head gravely. "Lady Jenny knew all about the matter, and hadn't harmed her husband. There was no reason why she should do it on that particular night." "That is what puzzles me," replied Mr. Scarse. "Lady Jenny was out on that night. She did not go to the Rectory to see Captain Burton as she had intended. For that she gave the very unsatisfactory reason that she was caught in the storm. Is it not probable that she met her husband and killed him?" "No. She would not carry a revolver. If they had already met and quarrelled about this dead woman, then it is possible she might in her jealous rage have made an attack upon her husband with anything to her hand. But a revolver would argue deliberation, and there was nothing sufficiently strong in the note your brother had prepared for her to urge her to deliberate murder." "Burton found a piece of crape in the dead man's hand," argued Scarse, "and Lady Jenny was wearing crape for her father. There might have been a struggle, and the piece might have come off in his hand." "Nonsense, Scarse. Ladies don't do that sort of thing. Besides, your brother wore crape too, and it is more likely that it was torn from his scarf. Malet might have kept it in his hand, without being conscious of it probably, when he went to his death." "Then you think Lady Jenny is innocent?" "It looks like it," Van Zwieten said with a queer smile; "but I'll let you know my opinion later on," and he rose to go. "You will keep my secret," entreated Scarse, following his visitor to the door. "Assuredly. I can make no use of it. I thought to find your brother guilty, but it seems he is not. The mystery deepens." "But Lady Jenny?" "True--Lady Jenny. Well, we shall see," and with this enigmatic speech the Dutchman withdrew.