“About dawn to-morrow,” Wingate replied.  “You will be here.”

“I never leave,” was the quiet answer.  “About dawn to-morrow?”

“Or before.”

Josephine asked the same question in a different manner when Wingate entered her little sitting room a few hours later.

“They are obstinate?” she enquired curiously.

He sipped the tea which she had handed to him.

“Very,” he admitted, “yet, after all, why not?  If we succeed, it is, at any rate, the end of their private fortunes, of Phipps’ ambitions and your husband’s dreams of wealth.”

“So much the better,” she declared sadly.  “More money with Henry has only meant a greater eagerness to get rid of it.”

A companionship which had no need of words seemed to have sprung up between them.  They sat together for some minutes without speech, minutes during which the deep silence which reigned throughout the house seemed curiously accentuated.  Josephine shivered.

“I shall never know what happiness is,” she declared, “until I have left this house—­never to return!”

“That will not be long,” he reminded her gravely.

She placed her hand on his.

“It is full of the ghosts of my sorrows,” she went on.  “I have known misery here.”

“And I one evening of happiness,” he said, smiling.

Her eyes glowed for a moment, but she was disturbed, tremulous, agitated.

“I listen for footsteps in the streets,” she confessed.  “I am afraid!”

“Needlessly,” he assured her.  “I know for a fact that Shields is off the scent.”

“But he is not a fool,” she answered hastily.

Wingate’s smile was full of confidence.

“Dear,” he said, “I do not believe that you have anything to fear.  There have been no loose ends left.  Behind your front door is safety.”

“The man Shields—­I only saw him for a few minutes, but he impressed me,” she sighed.

“Shields is, without doubt, a capable person,” Wingate admitted, “but he could only succeed in this case by blind guessing.  Stanley Rees was brought into this house through the mews, without observation from any living person.  Phipps, when he received that supposed message from you, was only too anxious to come the same way.  They left their respective abodes for here in a secrecy which they themselves encouraged, for Rees imagined that your husband had urgent need of him, and Phipps was ass enough to believe that your summons meant what he wished it to mean.  There has been no leakage of information anywhere.—­Honestly, Josephine, I think that you may banish your fears.”

“A woman’s fears only, dear,” she admitted, as she gave him her hands.  “Why did nature make my sex pessimists and yours optimists, I wonder?  I would so much rather look towards the sun.”

“Soon,” he promised her with a smile, “I shall dominate your subconscious mind.  You shall see the colours of life through my eyes.  You will find your long-delayed happiness.”