“So courteous a question demands a courteous answer, Master merchant, but to give it I must trouble you to listen to a tale.”

“Then let it be like my patience, brief,” I replied.

“It shall,” he said with a mocking bow.

Then very clearly and quietly he set out a dreadful story, giving dates and circumstances.  Let that story be.  The substance of it was that he had married Blanche soon after she reached womanhood and that she had borne him a child which died.

“Blanche,” I said when he had done, “you have heard.  Is this true?”

“Much of it is true,” she answered in that strange, cold voice, still staring at the fire.  “Only the marriage was a false one by which I was deceived.  He who celebrated it was a companion of the Lord Deleroy tricked out as a priest.”

“Do not let us wrangle of this matter,” said Deleroy.  “A man who mixes with the world like yourself, Master merchant, will know that women in a trap rarely lack excuses.  Still if it be admitted that this marriage did not fulfil all formalities, then so much the better for Blanche and myself.  If she be your lawful wife and not mine, you, I learn, have signed a writing in her favour under which she will inherit your great wealth.  That indenture I think you can find no opportunity to dispute, and if you do I have a promise that the property of a certain traitor shall pass to me, the revealer of his treachery.  Let it console you in your last moments, Master merchant, to remember that the lady whom you have honoured with your fancy will pass her days in wealth and comfort in the company of him whom she has honoured with her love.”

“Draw!” I said briefly as I unsheathed my sword.

“Why should I fight with a base, trading usurer?” he asked, still mocking me, though I thought that there was doubt in his voice.

“Answer your own question, thief.  Fight if you will, or die without fighting if you will not.  For know that until I am dead you do not leave this room living.”

“Until I dead too, O Lord,” broke in Kari in his gentle voice, bowing in his courteous foreign fashion.

As he did so with a sudden motion Kari shook the cloak back from his body and for the first time I saw that thrust through his leathern belt was a long weapon, half sword and half dagger, also that its sharpened steel was bare.

“Oh!” exclaimed Deleroy, “now I understand that I am trapped and that when you told me, Blanche, that this man would not return to-night and that therefore we were safe together, you lied.  Well, my Lady Blanche, you shall pay for this trick later.”