“It was high tide that night!” she cried.  “You know very well that he must have been drowned!”

“I have answered your question,” Tallente replied quietly.

There was a cold fury in her eyes.  The veins seemed to stand out on her clenched, worn hands.  She looked at him with all the suppressed passion of a creature impotent yet fiercely anxious to strike.

“I shall give information,” she cried.  “You shall be charged with his murder!”

Tallente shook his head.

“You will waste your time, Stella,” he said.  “For one thing, a woman may not give evidence against her husband.  Another thing, there cannot very well be a charge for murder unsupported by the production of the body.  And for a third thing, I should deny the whole story.”

Her fury abated, though the hate in her eyes remained.

“I think,” she declared, “that you are the most coldblooded creature I ever knew.”

The irony of the situation gripped at him.  He rose suddenly to his feet, filled with an overwhelming desire to end it.

“Stella,” he said, “to me you always seemed, especially during our last few years together, cold and utterly indifferent.  I know now that I was mistaken.  In your way you cared for Palliser.  You starved me.  My own fault, you would say?  Perhaps.  But listen.  There is a way into every man’s heart and a way into every woman’s, but sometimes that way lies hidden except to the one right person, and you weren’t the right person for me, and I wasn’t the right person for you.  Now answer the rest of my question and let us part.”

“Tell me,” she asked, with almost insolent irony, “do you believe that there could ever have been a right person for you?”

“My God, yes!” he answered, with a sudden fire.  “I suffer the tortures of the damned sometimes because I missed my chance!  There!  I’m telling you this just so that you shall think a little differently, if you can.  You and I between us have made an infernal mess of things.  It was chiefly my fault.  And as regards Palliser—­well, I am sorry.  Only the fellow—­he may have been lovable to you, but he was a coward and a sneak to me—­and he paid.  I am sorry.”

She seemed a little dazed.

“You mean to tell me, Andrew,” she persisted, “that there is really some one you care for, care for in the big way—­a woman who means as much to you as your place in Parliament—­your ambition?”

“More,” he declared vigorously.  “There isn’t a single thing I have or ever have had in life which I wouldn’t give for the chance—­just a chance—­”

“And she cares for you?”

“I think that she would,” he answered.  “She has been brought up in a very old-fashioned school.  She knows of you.”

Stella smiled a little bitterly.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose I am a brute, but I am glad to know that you can suffer.  I hope you will suffer; it makes you seem more human anyhow.  But in return for your confidence I will answer the other part of your question.  The man Miller was at the Manor that afternoon.  Palliser confessed to me that he had given him some important document.”