“You can suggest a motive for the crime?” interposed Sir Marmaduke, striving to sneer, although his voice sounded quite toneless, for his throat was parched and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, “by Gad! ’twere vastly interesting to hear your ladyship’s views.”

He tried to speak flippantly, at which Squire Boatfield frowned deprecation.  Lambert, without a word, had brought a chair near to Lady Sue, and with a certain gentle authority, he forced her to sit down.

“It was a crime, of that I feel sure,” said Sue, “nathless, that can be easily proven ... when ... when it has been discovered whether money and securities contained in a wallet of leather have been found among Prince Amede’s effects.”

“Money and securities?” ejaculated Sir Marmaduke with a loud oath, which he contrived to bring forth with the violence of genuine wrath, “Money and securities? ...  Forsooth, I trust ...”

“My money and my securities, sir,” she interposed with obvious hauteur, “which I had last night and in this self-same room placed in the hands of Prince Amede d’Orleans, my husband.”

She said this with conscious pride.  Whatever change her feelings may have undergone towards the man who had at one time been the embodiment of her most cherished dreams, she would not let her sneering guardian see that she had repented of her choice.

Death had endowed her exiled prince with a dignity which had never been his in life, and the veil of tragedy which now lay over the mysterious stranger and his still more mysterious life, had called forth to its uttermost the young wife’s sense of loyalty to him.

“Not your entire fortune, my dear, dear child, I hope ...” ejaculated Squire Boatfield, more horror-struck this time than he had been when first he had heard of the terrible murder.

“The wallet contained my entire fortune,” rejoined Sue calmly, “all that Master Skyffington had placed in my hands on the day that my father willed that it should be given me.”

“Such folly is nothing short of criminal,” said Sir Marmaduke roughly, “nathless, had not the gentleman been murdered that night he would have shown Thanet and you a clean pair of heels, taking your money with him, of course.”

“Aye! aye! but he was murdered,” said Squire Boatfield firmly, “the question only is by whom?”

“Some footpad who haunts the cliffs,” rejoined de Chavasse lightly, “’tis simple enough.”

“Simple, mayhap ...” mused the squire, “yet ...”

He paused a moment and once more silence fell on all those assembled in the small cottage parlor.  Sir Marmaduke felt as if every vein in his body was gradually being turned to stone.

The sense of expectancy was so overwhelming that it completely paralyzed every other faculty within him, and Editha’s searching eyes seemed like a corroding acid touching an aching wound.  Yet for the moment there was no danger.  He had so surrounded himself and his crimes with mystery that it would take more than a country squire’s slowly moving brain to draw aside that weird and ghostlike curtain which hid his evil deeds.