"Eh, c'est difficile, mais oui. She puts in ze boxes somezing, I knows no wat; zen mon cher ami come again an' ze leave par la fenêtre. I do look after zem, an' see ze mouchoir now wis Monsieur Fanks. Dat is all I speak. La voila." Roger, who had hitherto kept silent during the whole of this scene, so terrible in its intensity, now sprang to his feet with a cry of rage. "It's a lie--a lie!" he said, savagely. "Fanks! Marson! you surely don't believe this man--this vile wretch who would sell his soul for money? He killed Melstane himself--I am sure of it!--and tells this lie to ruin an innocent woman and to save his own worthless life. Look at him, all of you? The spy--the traitor--the defamer--the poisoner." Judas was standing by his chair, breathing heavily, with his face a ghastly white, and his eyes narrowed to their most dangerous expression. So vile, so craven, so treacherous he looked, that all present involuntarily shrank from him with loathing. "Monsieur!" he said, in his sibilant voice, speaking rapidly in his own tongue, to which he always reverted when excited, "you are a liar and a fool! I did not kill my friend. Bah! I mock myself of that accusation. Think you that I would be here, if I was what you say? What I speak is the truth of the great God! What I declare, I saw! My friend died by the devil-thought of a woman. And that woman is there!" He pointed straight at Judith, with a long, lean, cruel hand, and the eyes of all, leaving his tall, slim figure, rested on Judith Varlins. She stood still and mute as if she were turned to a statue of stone, and for the space of a minute not a movement was made by any of the actors in this strange drama. "What do you say to this accusation, Miss Varlins?" asked Fanks, in a tone of deep pity. "I say nothing." The words dropped slowly from her white lips, and then the overstrained nerves of the woman gave way, and with a low moan of acute anguish, she sank down in a faint on the floor. Roger sprang forward and raised her in his arms, but Judas, with a mocking, sardonic laugh, tossed his long arms in the air, and burst out into a jeering speech. "Yes, yes! Take her in your arms! Lift her from the ground, but you cannot lift her again to her purity of a woman. She is lost, the woman you loved. In her place you find the murderess. Ah! it is a good play!" This cowardly triumphing was too much even for the phlegmatic Fanks, and with a suppressed oath he strode up to the gibing villain. "If you say another word, you despicable blackguard, I will kill you!" The Frenchman turned on him with the snarling ferocity of a tiger. "Eh, you will kill me, my brave! Is it that I am a child you can rage at with your big words? Miserable English that you are, I spit upon you! I, Jules Guinaud, laugh at your largeness. Eh! I believe well. You are afraid of what I say; but I keep not the silence, holy blue! Bah! your sweet English lady, she is a criminal!"