Miss Silver’s handsome face drooped lower.  She made no reply.

“Answer, if you please,” blandly insinuated the lawyer.  “You have given your evidence hitherto with most unfeminine and admirable straightforwardness.  Don’t let us have a hitch now.  Was this Mr. Parmalee a suitor of yours?”

“He was.”

“An accepted one, I take it?”

“Y-e-e-s.”

“And you know nothing now of his whereabouts?  That is strange.”

“It is strange, but no less true than strange.  I have never seen or heard of Mr. Parmalee since the afternoon preceding that fatal night.”

“How did you see him then?”

“He had been up to London for a couple of days on business connected with my lady; he had returned that afternoon with another person; he sent for me to inform my lady.  I met and spoke to him on the street, just beyond the Blue Bell Inn.”

“What had he to say to you?”

“Very little.  He told me to tell my lady to meet him precisely at midnight, on the stone terrace.  Before midnight the murder was done.  What became of him, why he did not keep his appointment, I do not know.  He left the inn very late, paid his score, and has never been seen or heard of since.

“Had he any interest in Lady Kingsland’s death?”

“On the contrary, all his interest lay in her remaining alive.  While she lived, he held a secret which she intended to pay him well to keep.  Her death blights all his pecuniary prospects, and Mr. Parmalee loved money.”

“Miss Silver, who was the female who accompanied Mr. Parmalee from London, and who quitted the Blue Bell Inn with him late on the night of the tenth?”

Again Sybilla hesitated, looked down, and seemed confused.

“It is not necessary, is it?” said she, pleadingly.  “I had rather not tell.  It—­it is connected with the secret, and I am bound by a promise——­”

“Which I think we must persuade you to break,” interrupted the debonair attorney.  “I think this secret will throw a light on the matter, and we must have it.  Extreme cases require extreme measures, my dear young lady.  Throw aside your honorable scruples, break your promise, and tell us this secret which has caused a murder.”

Sybilla Silver looked from judge to jury, from counsel to counsel, and clasped her hands.

“Don’t ask me!” she cried—­“oh, pray, don’t ask me to tell this!”

“But we must—­it is essential—­we must have it, Miss Silver.  Come, take courage.  It can do no harm now, you know—­the poor lady is dead.  And first—­to plunge into the heart of it at once—­tell us who was the mysterious lady with Mr. Parmalee?”

The hour of Sybilla’s triumph had come.  She lifted her black eyes, glittering with livid flame, and shot a quick, sidelong glance at the prisoner.  Awfully white, awfully calm, he sat like a man of stone, awaiting to hear what would cost him his life.