’Do you know it makes me uncomfortable to hear you talk like that?  I wish you wouldn’t!  You can’t deny that your husband’s half a lunatic, anyway.  He was behaving like one here only a quarter of an hour ago, and it’s no use denying it.’

‘But I’m not denying anything!’

‘No, I know you’re not,’ said Mr. Van Torp.  ’If you don’t know how crazy he is, I don’t suppose any one else does.  But your nerves are better than mine, as I told you.  The idea of killing anything makes me uncomfortable, and when it comes to thinking that he really might murder you some day—­well, I can’t stand it, that’s all!  If I didn’t know that you lock your door at night I shouldn’t sleep, sometimes.  You do lock it, always, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes!’

’Be sure you do to-night.  I wonder whether he is in earnest about the divorce this time, or whether the whole scene was just bluff, to get my money.’

‘I don’t know,’ answered Lady Maud, rising.  ’He needs money, I believe, but I’m not sure that he would try to get it just in that way.’

‘Too bad?  Even for him?’

‘Oh dear, no!  Too simple!  He’s a tortuous person.’

‘He tried to pocket those notes with a good deal of directness!’ observed Mr. Van Torp.

’Yes.  That was an opportunity that turned up unexpectedly, but he didn’t know it would.  How could he?  He didn’t come here expecting to find thousands of pounds lying about on the table!  It was easy enough to know that I was here, of course.  I couldn’t go out of my own house on foot, in a dinner-gown, and pick up a hansom, could I?  I had one called and gave the address, and the footman remembered it and told my husband.  There’s nothing more foolish than making mysteries and giving the cabman first one address and then another.  If Boris is really going to bring a suit, the mere fact that there was no concealment as to where I was going this evening would be strong evidence, wouldn’t it?  Evidence he cannot deny, too, since he must have learnt the address from the footman, who heard me give it!  And people who make no secret of a meeting are not meeting clandestinely, are they?’

‘You argue that pretty well,’ said Mr. Van Torp, smiling.

‘And besides,’ rippled Lady Maud’s sweet voice, as she shook out the folds of her black velvet, ‘I don’t care.’

Her friend held up the fur-lined cloak and put it over her shoulders.  She fastened it at the neck and then turned to the fire for a moment before leaving.

‘Rufus,’ she said gravely, after a moment’s pause, and looking down at the coals, ‘you’re an angel.’

‘The others in the game don’t think so,’ answered Mr. Van Torp.

‘No one was ever so good to a woman as you’ve been to me,’ said Maud.

And all at once the joyful ring had died away from her voice and there was another tone in it that was sweet and low too, but sad and tender and grateful, all at once.