“Did anybody have a chance?”

She looked at him with a face full of unhappiness.

“You are right.  I was possessed.  I made a terrible mistake; but do not fear that I have escaped the punishment.”

He guessed her meaning and led her away from the subject of her husband.

“Tell me, if it won’t hurt you too much, a little about Michael Pendean.”

But she appeared not to hear him.  Her thoughts were concerned entirely with herself and her present situation.

“I can trust you.  You are wise and know life.  I have not married a man, but a devil!”

Her hands clenched and he saw a flash of her teeth in the gloom of the silent chamber.

He took snuff and listened, while the unfortunate woman raved of her error.

“I hate him.  I loathe him,” she cried, and heaped hard words on the head of the debonair Giuseppe.  She broke off presently panted, and then subsided in tears.

Peter studied her very carefully, yet, for the moment, showed no great sympathy.  His answer was tonic rather than sedative.

“You must keep your nerve and be patient,” he said.  “Even Italy’s a free country in some respects; you need not stop with Doria if you don’t want to.”

“Might my husband be alive?  Do you imagine it possible that he could be alive?  I think of him as my husband again, now that this midsummer madness is over.  I have much to say to you.  I want you—­I pray you—­to help me as well as my uncle.  But he must come first, of course.”

“We shall possibly find that in helping him we are helping you,” answered Peter.  “But you ask a question and I always answer a question when it’s reasonable to do so.  No, Jenny, I cannot think that Michael Pendean is alive.  Let us go out into the air; it is stuffy here.  But remember I do not say that he is not alive.  It was certainly man’s blood that an unknown hand shed at Foggintor; it was man’s blood in the cave under the cliffs near Mr. Bendigo Redmayne’s home; but as yet we know no more, with absolute certainty, who lost it than who spilled it.  That is the large problem I am here to solve.  And perhaps, if you want to help me, you can do so.  This at any rate I promise you:  if you help me, you will also help yourself and your Uncle Albert.”

“He is in danger?”

“Consider the situation.  In process of time the estate of Albert’s two brothers will devolve upon him.  That means, I suppose, that sooner or later the bulk of the money must be yours.  Albert is frail.  I do not think he will be a long-lived man.  What follows?  Surely that you—­the last of the Redmaynes—­will inherit everything.  And you are married.  Here is a proposition, then.  And what have you just told me?  That your husband is ‘a devil,’ and that you hate him since you have seen a glimpse of his heart.  These facts cannot be entirely separated.  They may or may not be closely allied.”

She looked at him steadfastly.