Carey’s maimed hand came quietly into view, and closed upon the man’s wrist.

“It is not my custom,” he coldly said, “to refuse help to a woman.”

“Confound you!” stormed Coningsby.  “Where is she now?  Where?  Where?”

There fell a sudden pause.  Carey’s eyes were like steel; his grasp never slackened.

“If I knew,” he said deliberately, at length, “I should not tell you!  You are not fit for the society of any good woman.”

The words fell keen as a whip-lash, and as pitiless.  Coningsby glared into his face like a goaded bull; his look was murderous.  And then by some chance his eyes fell upon the hand that gripped his wrist.  He looked at it closely, attentively, for a few seconds, and finally set Carey free.

“You may thank that,” he said more quietly, “for getting you out of the hottest corner you were ever in.  I didn’t notice it yesterday, though I remember now that you were wounded.  So you parted with half your hand to drag me out of that hell, did you?  It was a rank, bad investment on your part.”

He flung away abruptly, and helped himself to some brandy.  A considerable pause ensued before he spoke again.

“Egad!” he said then, with a harsh laugh, “it’s a deuced ingenious lie, this of yours.  I suppose you and that imp of mischief, Gwen, hatched it up between you?  I saw she had got her thinking-cap on yesterday.  I am not considered good enough for her lady mother.  But, mark you, I’m going to have her for all that!  It isn’t good for man to live alone, and I have taken a fancy to Evelyn Emberdale.”

“You don’t believe me?” Carey asked.

Somehow, though he had been prepared for bluster and even violence, he had not expected incredulity.

Coningsby filled and emptied his glass a second time before he answered.

“No,” he said then, with sudden savagery:  “I don’t believe you!  You had better get out of my house at once, or—­I warn you—­I may break every bone in your blackguardly body yet!” He turned on Carey, leaping madness in his eyes.

But Carey stood like a rock.  “You know the truth,” he said quietly.

Coningsby broke into another wild laugh, and pointed up at the picture above his head.

“I shall know it,” he declared, “when the sea gives up its dead.  Till that day I am free to console myself in my own way, and no one shall stop me.”

“You are not free,” Carey said.  Very steadily he faced the man, very distinctly he spoke.  “And, however you console yourself, it will not be with my cousin Lady Emberdale.”

Coningsby turned back to the table to fill his glass again.  He spilt the spirit over the cloth as he did it.

“Man alive,” he gibed, “do you think she will believe you if I don’t?”

It was the weak point of his position, and Carey realised it.  It was more than probable that Lady Emberdale would take Coningsby’s view of the matter.  If the man really attracted her it was almost a foregone conclusion.  He knew Gwen’s mother well—­her inconsequent whims, her obstinacy.