“Are you quite mad?” she said.

“Not quite,” he answered; “only three parts—­but I am beyond my own control.  That is the best proof of what has happened to me.  You are an arrogant piece and you would defy me if you stood alone, but you don’t, and, by the Lord!  I have reached a point where I will make use of every lever I can lay my hand on—­yourself, Rosalie, Ughtred, Ffolliott—­the whole lot of you!”

The thing which was hardest upon her was her knowledge of her own strength—­of what she might have allowed herself of flaming words and instant action—­but for the memory of Rosy’s ghastly little face, as it had looked when she cried out, “You must not think of me.  Betty, go home—­go home!” She held the white desperation of it before her mental vision and answered him even with a certain interested deliberateness.

“Do you know,” she inquired, “that you are talking to me as though you were the villain in the melodrama?”

“There is an advantage in that,” he answered, with an unholy smile.  “If you repeat what I say, people will only think that you are indulging in hysterical exaggeration.  They don’t believe in the existence of melodrama in these days.”

The cynical, absolute knowledge of this revealed so much that nerve was required to face it with steadiness.

“True,” she commented.  “Now I think I understand.”

“No, you don’t,” he burst forth.  “You have spent your life standing on a golden pedestal, being kowtowed to, and you imagine yourself immune from difficulties because you think you can pay your way out of anything.  But you will find that you cannot pay your way out of this—­or rather you cannot pay Rosalie’s way out of it.”

“I shall not try.  Go on,” said the girl.  “What I do not understand, you must explain to me.  Don’t leave anything unsaid.”

“Good God, what a woman you are!” he cried out bitterly.  He had never seen such beauty in his life as he saw in her as she stood with her straight young body flat against the tree.  It was not a matter of deep colour of eye, or high spirit of profile—­but of something which burned him.  Still as she was, she looked like a flame.  She made him feel old and body-worn, and all the more senselessly furious.

“I believe you hate me,” he raged.  “And I may thank my wife for that.”  Then he lost himself entirely.  “Why cannot you behave well to me?  If you will behave well to me, Rosalie shall go her own way.  If you even looked at me as you look at other men—­but you do not.  There is always something under your lashes which watches me as if I were a wild beast you were studying.  Don’t fancy yourself a dompteuse.  I am not your man.  I swear to you that you don’t know what you are dealing with.  I swear to you that if you play this game with me I will drag you two down if I drag myself with you.  I have nothing much to lose.  You and your sister have everything.”

“Go on,” Betty said briefly.