All this was to accomplish exactly what it did accomplish, namely, the ill temper, the wrath, the angry resentment of young Burnham-Seaforth.  And when the evening had passed and bedtime arrived, Cleek took his candle and retired in the direction of the rooms set apart for him, with the certainty of knowing that he had done that which would this very night prove beyond all question the guilt or innocence of one person at least who was enmeshed in this mysterious tangle.  He was not surprised, therefore, at what followed his next step.

Reaching the upper landing he blew out the light of his candle, slammed the door to his own room, noisily turned the key, and shot the bolt of another, then tiptoed his way back to the staircase and looked down the well-hole into the lower hall.

Zuilika had retired to her room, the Major had retired to his, and now Anita was taking up her candle to retire to hers.  She had barely touched it, however, when there came a sound of swift footsteps and young Burnham-Seaforth lurched out of the drawing-room door and joined her.  He was in a state of great excitement and was breathing hard.

“Anita—­Miss Rosario!” he began, plucking her by the sleeve and uplifting a pale, boyish face—­he was not yet twenty-two—­to hers with a look of abject misery.  “I want to speak to you—­I simply must speak to you.  I’ve been waiting for the chance, and now that it’s come—­Look here!  You’re not going back on me, are you?”

“Going back on you?” repeated Anita, showing her pretty white teeth in an amused smile.  “What shall you mean by that ’going back on you’—­eh?  You are a stupid little donkey, to be sure.  But then I do not care to get on the back of one—­so why?”

“Oh, you know very well what I mean,” he rapped out angrily.  “It is not fair the way you have been treating me ever since that yellow-headed bounder came.  I’ve had a night of misery—­Zuilika never showing herself; you doing nothing, absolutely nothing, although you promised—­you know you did!—­and I heard you, I absolutely heard you persuade that St. Aubyn fool to stop at least another night.”

“Yes, of course you did.  But what of it?  He is good company—­he talks well, he sings well, he is very handsome and—­well, what difference can it make to you?  You are not interested in me, amigo?”

“No, no; of course I’m not.  You are nothing to me at all—­you—­Oh, I beg your pardon; I didn’t quite mean that.  I—­I mean you are nothing to me in that way.  But you—­you’re not keeping to your word.  You promised, you know, that you’d use your influence with Zuilika; that you’d get her to be more kind to me—­to see me alone and—­and all that sort of thing.  And you’ve not made a single attempt—­not one.  You’ve just sat round and flirted with that tow-headed brute and done nothing at all to help me on; and—­and it’s jolly unkind of you, that’s what!”