"You need not let what you have just learnt trouble you, sir," the other returned carelessly. "Nothing that you have told me so far would be news to the other side. As for the connection!"--he flicked his fingers scornfully,--"it need weigh with you no more than that... The lady disapproves of me. We have not met for years." "Perhaps, though, since a connection of yours is mixed up in this affair you might not care to go on with it..." "It makes no difference," Lawless answered. The Colonel reached across the table. "You are throwing in your lot with me?" he asked quickly. The other's hand met his. "I'll get those papers back for you, or I'll kill your man," he said. CHAPTER TWO. It was late afternoon. The sun hung low in the blue sky and shot its beams between the palm slits, making a brilliant tracery on the smooth paths where it pierced a passage between the branches of the mimosa trees, yellow with their golden balls. The chirrup of a cricket was the only sound that broke the quivering silence, save when every now and again the warm wind swept lazily through the gum trees and made music with their leaves. Looking out upon the sultry stillness of the garden, her pose stiller even than the almost motionless trees, with tense features, and eyes that were stirred with emotion, as the eyes of one who looks back upon the past from the stage of the present, seeing things with the broadened vision of experience, stood the woman of whom the Colonel had spoken in his interview with Lawless. She was tall and dark and splendid, with large brown eyes flecked with a lighter shade as though they held imprisoned sunbeams in their pellucid depths. Her rich dark hair waved back from a low brow that was like ivory in its smooth whiteness, and in the thin lips, scarlet as the flower of the pomegranate, showed her only touch of colour. She wore a white dress of some Indian embroidery, and the plain gold band of her wedding-ring comprised her sole ornament. A clock inside the room chimed the half-hour, and scarcely had the sound died away into silence when the door behind her opened and a native servant showed a visitor into the room. Mrs Lawless turned slowly round, and with a hesitating, reluctant step moved forward a few paces and then stood still, her arms hanging motionless at her sides, her lips slightly parted, perhaps in a greeting that never passed them, for she did not speak when she met the straight gaze of the visitor's keen eyes, and looked into the scarred yet still handsome face of the man she had not seen for eight years. He had halted just inside the doorway, and he remained where he was, staring at her, the light falling direct upon his face. The scar showed livid. She gazed at it with fascinated eyes. She had not seen it before.