I was silent, moodily, obstinately silent.  She had hit the blot, and could put but one interpretation upon it.  I saw she guessed I knew something.  Not how much, perhaps, but something to her discredit.  She still was not satisfied; she would penetrate my reserve, overcome my reticence, have it out of me willy nilly, whether I would or no.

“You cannot surely refuse me?  I have my reasons for desiring to know the very worst.”

“Why drive me to that?” I schooled myself to seem hard and uncompromising.  I felt I was weakening under the subtle charm of her presence, and the pretty pleading of her violet eyes; but I was still resolute not to give way.

“If you will only tell me why you think such evil I may be able to justify myself, or at least explain away appearances that are against me.”

“You admit there are such appearances?  Remember, I never said so.”

“Then on what do you condemn me?  You do condemn me, I am certain of it,” she insisted, seeing my gesture of negation.  “Are you treating me fairly, chivalrously, as a gentleman and a man of honour should?  How can you reconcile it to your conscience?”

“Some people talk very lightly of conscience, or use it when it is an empty meaningless word,” I said severely.

“You imply that I have no conscience, or that I should feel the qualms, the prickings of conscience?”

“After what you’ve done, yes,” I blurted out.

“What have I done?  What do you know of it, or what led me to do it?  How dare you judge me without knowing the facts, without a shadow of proof?” She sprang to her feet and passed to the door, where she turned, as it were, at bay.

“I have the very best proof, from your own lips.  I heard you and your maid talking together at Calais.”

“A listener, Colonel Annesley?  Faugh!”

“It was forced on me.  You stood under my window there.”  I defended myself indignantly.  “I wish to heaven I had never heard.  I did not want to know; your secrets are your own affair.”

“And my actions, I presume?” she put in with superb indifference.

“And their consequences, madam,” but the shot failed rather of effect.  She merely smiled and shook her head recklessly, contemptuously.  Was she so old a hand, so hardened in crime, that the fears of detection, arrest, reprisals, the law and its penalties had no effect upon her?  Undoubtedly at Calais she was afraid; some misgiving, some haunting terror possessed her.  Now, when standing before me fully confessed for what she was, and practically at my mercy, she could laugh with cool and unabashed levity and make little of the whole affair.

If I had hoped that I had done with her now, when the murder was out, I was very much mistaken.  She had some further designs on me, I was sure.  She wanted to make use of me, how or in what way I could not imagine; but I soon perceived that she was anxious to be friends.  The woman was in the ascendant, and, as I thought, the eternal feminine ever agog to attract and subjugate the male, she would conquer my admiration even if she could not secure my esteem.