The man laughed.  “My dear child,” he exclaimed, “you really misjudge me entirely.  I am here for two reasons:  to ask your forgiveness for making that allegation which was imperative; and, secondly, to assure you that, if you will allow me, I will yet be your friend.”

“Friend!” she echoed in a hollow voice.  “You—­my friend!”

“Yes.  I know that you mistrust me,” he replied; “but I want to prove that my intentions towards you are those of real friendship.”

“And you, who ever since my girlhood days have been my worst enemy, ask me now to trust you!” she exclaimed with indignation.  “No; go back to Lady Heyburn and tell her that I refuse to accept the olive-branch which you and she hold out to me.”

“My dear girl, you don’t follow me,” he exclaimed impatiently.  “This has nothing whatever to do with Lady Heyburn.  I have come to you from purely personal motives.  My sole desire is to effect your return to Glencardine.”

“For your own ends, Mr. Flockart, without a doubt!” she said bitterly.

“Ah! there you are quite mistaken.  Though you assert that I am your father’s enemy, I am, I tell you, his friend.  He is ever thinking of you with regret.  You were his right hand.  Would it not be far better if he invited you to return?”

She sighed at the thought of the blind man whom she regarded with such entire devotion, but answered, “No, I shall never return to Glencardine.”

“Why?” he asked.  “Was it anything more than natural that, believing you had been prying into his affairs, your father, in a moment of anger, condemned you to this life of appalling monotony?”

“No, not more natural than that you, the culprit, should have made me the scapegoat for the second time,” was her defiant reply.

“Have I not already told you that the reason I’m here is to crave your forgiveness?  I admit that my actions have been the reverse of honourable; but—­well, there were circumstances which compelled me to act as I did.”

“You got an impression of my father’s safe-key, had a duplicate made in Glasgow, as I have found out, and one night opened the safe and copied certain private documents having regard to a proposed loan to the Greek Government.  The night I discovered you was the second occasion when you went to the library and opened the safe.  Do you deny that?”

“What you allege, Gabrielle, is perfectly correct,” he replied.  “I know that I was a blackguard to shield myself behind you—­to tell the lie I did that night.  But how could I avoid it?”

“Suppose I had, in retaliation, spoken the truth?” she asked, looking the man straight in the face.

“Ah!  I knew that you would not do that.”

“You believe that I dare not—­dare not for my own sake, eh?”

He nodded in the affirmative.

“Then you are much mistaken, Mr. Flockart,” she said in a hard voice.  “You don’t understand that a woman may become desperate.”