“What do you mean?  Tell me what you mean!” she asked desperately.

“Do you remember the story I told you down at Netherway—­of a man and his wife and another woman?”

“Yes, I remember”—­almost whispering.

“That was the story of my sister, June, and her husband, Dan Storran.  You—­were the other woman.”

She felt his eyes—­those eyes out of which all hope had died—­fixed on her.

“June—­your sister?  Your sister?  Are you sure?” she stammered stupidly.

It couldn’t be true!  Not even God could have thought of a punishment so cruel, so awful as this.  That June—­the woman who had died just because she “had no heart to go on living”—­should be Michael’s sister!  Oh, it was a crazy tangling of the threads—­mad!  Like some macabre invention sprung from a disordered brain.  She wanted to laugh, and she knew if she began to laugh she should never stop.  She felt she was losing her hold over herself.  With a violent effort she clutched at her self-control.

“Will you say it all over again, please?” she said in a flat voice.  “I don’t think I understand.”

“Nor did I till to-day,” he replied shortly.  “Davilof made me understand—­this morning.”

“Davilof?” The word seemed to drag itself from her throat. . . .  Davilof—­who had been at Stockleigh that summer!  Then it was all going to be true, after all.

“Yes, Davilof.  He had chanced on the fact that June was my sister.  Very few people knew it, because, when she married, it was against our father’s wishes, and she had cut herself adrift from the family.  I wanted to help her, but she would never let me.”  He paused, then went on tonelessly:  “It’s all quite clear, isn’t it?  You know everything that happened while you were at Stockleigh.  I’ve told you what happened afterwards.  Storran cleared out of the country at once, and June had nothing left to live for.  The only thing I didn’t know was the name of the woman who had smashed up both their lives.  I saw Dan in Paris . . .  He came to me at my studio.  But he was a white man.  He never gave away the name of the woman who had ruined him.  I only knew she had spent that particular summer at Stockleigh.  It was Davilof who told me who the woman was.”

"I can prevent your marrying Quarrington!" Magda could hear again the quiet conviction of Antoine’s utterance.  So he had known, then, when he threatened her, that June was Michael’s sister!  She wondered dully how long he had been aware of the fact—­how he had first stumbled across it and realised its value as a hammer with which to crush her happiness.  Not that it mattered.  Nothing mattered any more.  The main fact was that he had known.

June was dead!  Amid the confused welter of emotions which seemed to have utterly submerged her during the last few minutes, Magda had almost lost sight of this as a fact by itself—­as distinct from its identity with the fact that Michael’s sister was dead.  She felt vaguely sorry for June.