“Damnation!” Ralph Dacre actually staggered as if he had received a blow between the eyes.  But almost in the next moment he recovered himself, and uttered a quivering laugh.  “Man alive!  You are not fool enough to believe such a cock-and-bull story as that!” he said.  “And you have come all this way in this fancy get-up to tell me!  You must be mad!”

Monck was still holding out the letter.  “You had better see for yourself,” he reiterated.  “It is damnably circumstantial.”

“I tell you it’s an infernal lie!” flung back Dacre furiously.  “There is no woman on this earth who has any claim on me—­except Stella.  Why should I read it?  I tell you it’s nothing but damned fabrication—­a tissue of abominable falsehood!”

“You mean to deny that you have ever been through any form of marriage before?” said Monck slowly.

“Of course I do!” Dacre uttered another angry laugh.  “You must be a positive fool to imagine such a thing.  It’s preposterous, unheard of!  Of course I have never been married before.  What are you thinking of?”

Monck remained unmoved.  “She has been a music-hall actress,” he said.  “Her name is—­or was—­Madelina Belleville.  Do you tell me that you have never had any dealings whatever with her?”

Dacre laughed again fiercely, scoffingly.  “You don’t imagine that I would marry a woman of that sort, do you?” he said.

“That is no answer to my question,” Monck said firmly.

“Confound you!” Dacre blazed into open wrath.  “Who the devil are you to enquire into my private affairs?  Do you think I am going to put up with your damned impertinence?  What?”

“I think you will have to.”  Monck spoke quitely, but there was deadly determination in his words.  “It’s a choice of evils, and if you are wise you will choose the least.  Are you going to read the letter?”

Dacre stared at him for a moment or two with eyes of glowering resentment; but in the end he put forth a hand not wholly steady and took the sheet held out to him.  Monck stood beside him in utter immobility, gazing out over the valley with a changeless vigilance that had about it something fateful.

Minutes passed.  Dacre seemed unable to lift his eyes from the page.  But it fluttered in his hold, though the night was still, as if a strong wind were blowing.

Suddenly he moved, as one who violently breaks free from some fettering spell.  He uttered a bitter oath and tore the sheet of paper passionately to fragments.  He flung them to the ground and trampled them underfoot.

“Ten million curses on her!” he raved.  “She has been the bane of my life!”

Monck’s eyes came out of the distance and surveyed him, coldly curious.  “I thought so,” he said, and in his voice was an odd inflection as of one who checks a laugh at an ill-timed jest.

Dacre stamped again like an infuriated bull.  “If I had her here—­I’d strangle her!” he swore.  “That brother of yours is an artist.  He has sketched her to the life—­the she-devil!” His voice cracked and broke.  He was breathing like a man in torture.  He swayed as he stood.