“Yes.  You mustn’t be angry with me,” says Minnie, still with the air of the ingénue full about her; “but I felt ever since the night before last that I should speak to you.”

“The night before last!”

Rylton’s astonishment is so immense that he can do nothing but repeat her words.  And now it must be told that Minnie, who had seen that vindictive look on Mrs. Bethune’s face as she went down the terrace steps on the night of Lady Warbeck’s dance, and had augured ill from it for Tita and her brother, had cross-examined Tom very cleverly, and had elicited from him the fact that he had heard footsteps behind the arbour where he and somebody—­he refused to give the name—­had sat that night, and that he—­Tom—­had glanced round, and had seen and known, but that he had said nothing of it to his companion.  A mutual hatred for Mrs. Bethune, born in the breast of Tom as well as in his sister, had alone compelled Tom to declare even this much.  Minnie had probed and probed about his companion, as to who she was, but Tom would not speak.  Yet he might as well have spoken.  Minnie knew!

“Yes, that night at Lady Warbeck’s.  I know you will think me horrid to say what I am going to say, and really there is nothing—­only—­I am so fond of Tita.”

“It is not horrid of you to say that,” says Rylton, smiling.

“No.  I know that.  But that isn’t all.  I—­am afraid Tita has an enemy in this house.”

“Impossible,” says Rylton.

He rises, smiling always, but as if to put a termination to the interview.

“No, but listen,” says Minnie, who, now she has entered upon her plan, would be difficult to beat.  “Do you remember when you and Mrs. Bethune were standing on the balcony at Warbeck Towers—­that night?”

Rylton starts, but in a second collects himself.

“Yes,” returns he calmly.

He feels it would be madness to deny it.

“Very well,” says Minnie, “I was there too, and I went down the steps—­to the garden.  Your wife went down before me.”

Rylton grows suddenly interested.  He had seen Minnie go down those steps—­but the other!

“Then?” asks he; his tone is breathless.

“Oh, yes—­just then,” says Minnie, “and that is what I wanted to talk to you about.  You and Mrs. Bethune were on the balcony above, and Tita passed just beneath, and I saw Mrs. Bethune lean over for a second as it were—­it seemed to me a most evil second, and she saw Tita—­and her eyes!” Minnie pauses.  “Her eyes were awful!  I felt frightened for Tita.”

“You mean to tell me that Mrs. Bethune saw Tita that night passing beneath the balcony?”

The memory of his bet with Marian, that strange bet, so strangely begun, comes back to him—­and other things too!  He loses himself a little.  Once again he is back on that balcony; the lights are low, the stars are over his head.  Marian is whispering to him, and all at once she grows silent.  He remembers it; she takes a step forward.  He remembers that too—­a step as though she would have checked something, and then thought better of it.