“Helpless?  Far from it.  She is a self-controlled, efficient, hard-headed woman.  Her loveliness is a curtain.  You have not yet got behind that.  You loved her, but she did not love you.  She loved me and married me.  And it is I who know her character, not you.  She is very clever and pretends a great deal more than she feels.  If she makes you think she is unhappy and helpless, she does it on purpose.  She may be unhappy, because to keep secrets is often to court unhappiness; but she is not helpless at all.  Her eyes look helpless; her mouth never.  There is power and will between her teeth.”

“Why do you speak of secrets?”

“Because you did.  I have no secrets.  It is Jenny, my wife, who has secrets.  I tell you this. She knows all about the red man! She is as deep as hell.”

“You mean that she understands what is happening and will not tell her uncle or you?”

“That is precisely what I mean.  She does not care a curse for Alberto.  What is born of hen will scrape—­remember that.  Her father had a temper like a fiend and a cousin of her mother was hanged for murder.  These are facts she will not deny.  I had them from her uncle.  I am frightened of her and I have disappointed her, because I am not what she thought and have ceased to covet my ancestral estates and title.”

Such a monstrous picture of Jenny at first bewildered Brendon and then incensed him.  Was it within the bounds of possibility that after six months of wedded life with this woman, any man living would utter such an indictment and believe it?

“She is great in her way—­much too great for me,” said Giuseppe frankly.  “She should have been a Medici or a Borgia; she should have lived many centuries sooner, before policeman and detective officers were invented.  You stare and think I lie.  But I do not lie.  I see very clearly indeed.  I look back at the past and the veil is lifted.  I understand much that I did not understand when I was growing blind with love for her.  As for this Robert Redmayne—­’Robert the Devil,’ I call him—­once I thought that he was a ghost; but he is not a ghost:  he is a live man.

“And presently what will happen if he is not caught and hanged?  He will kill Uncle Alberto and perhaps kill me, too.  Then he will run away with Jenny.  And I tell you this, Brendon:  the sooner he does so, if only he leaves me alone, the better pleased I shall be.  A hideous speech?  Yes, very hideous indeed; but perfectly true, like many hideous things.”

“Do you honestly expect that I, who know your wife, am going to believe this grotesque story?”