“Now,” I demanded, “tell me what you are doing here.”

“You have your privilege at guessing,” he sneered, in his easy, mocking way.  “Have you never taken a little adventure of this sort yourself?”

“Ah, some servant girl—­at your host’s house.  Excellent adventure.  But this is your last one,” I said to him.

“Is it so,” he sneered.  “Then let me make my prayers!” He mocked at me, and had no fear of me whatever.

“In Virginia we keep the shotgun for men who prowl around houses at night.  What are you doing here?”

“You have no right to ask.  It is not your house.”

“There was a light,” said I.  “For that reason I have a right to ask.  I am a guest, and a guest has duties as well as a host.”

A certain change in mood seized him.  “If I give you parole,” he asked, “will you believe me, and let us talk freely?”

“Yes,” said I at length, slowly.  “You are a liar; but I do not think you will break parole.”

“You gauge me with perfect accuracy,” he answered.  “That is why I wish to talk.”

I threw the pistol on the seat between us.  “What is it you want to know,” I asked.  “And again I ask you, why are you here, when you are supposed to be in South Carolina?”

“I have business here.  You cost me my chance out there in the West,” he answered, slowly.  “In turn I cost you your chance there.  I shall cost you other things here.  I said you should pay my debt.”  He motioned toward my neck with his slim finger.

“Yes, you saved my life,” I said, “and I have hated you for that ever since.”

“Will you make me one promise?” he asked.

“Perhaps, but not in advance.”

“And will you keep it?”

“If I make it.”

“Will you promise me to do one thing you have already promised to do?”

“Orme, I am in no mood to sit here and gossip like an old woman.”

“Oh, don’t cut up ugly.  You’re done out of it all around, in any case.  Belknap, it seems, was to beat both you and me.  Then why should not you and I try to forget?  But now as to this little promise.  I was only going to ask you to do as much as Belknap, or less.”

“Very well, then.”

“I want you to promise to marry Grace Sheraton.”

I laughed in his face.  “I thought you knew me better than that, Orme.  I’ll attend to my own matters for myself.  I shall not even ask you why you want so puerile a promise.  I am much of a mind to shoot you.  Tell me, who are you, and what are you, and what are you doing in this country?”

“Do you really want to know?” he smiled.

“Assuredly I do.  I demand it.”

“I believe I will tell you, then,” he said quietly.  He mused for a time before he raised his head and went on.

“I am Charles Gordon Orme, Marquis of Bute and Rayne.  Once I lived in England.  For good reasons I have since lived elsewhere.  I am what is known as a black sheep—­a very, very black one.”