“Tut, tut!” was her contemptuous reply.  “Do you consider me a child?  Do I look like a babbling infant, Frederick?”

Her face, which had been lifted to his in saying this, was so illumined, both by her smile, which was strangely enchanting for one so evil, and by the moon-light, which so etherialises all that it touches, that he found himself forced to recall that other purer, truer face he had left at the honeysuckle porch to keep down a last wild impulse toward her, which would have been his undoing, both in this world and the next, as he knew.

“Or do I look simply like a woman?” she went on, seeing the impression she had made, and playing upon it.  “A woman who understands herself and you and all the secret perils of the game we are both playing?  If I am a child, treat me as a child; but if I am a woman—–­”

“Stand out of my way!” he cried, catching up his valise and striding furiously by her.  “Woman or child, know that I will not be your plaything to be damned in this world and in the next.”

“Are you bound for the city of destruction?” she laughed, not moving, but showing such confidence in her power to hold him back that he stopped in spite of himself.  “If so, you are taking the direct road there and have only to hasten.  But you had better remain in your father’s house; even if you are something of a prisoner there, like my very insignificant self.  The outcome will be more satisfactory, even if you have to share your future with me.”

“And what course will you take,” he asked, pausing with his hand on the fence, “if I decide to choose destruction without you, rather than perdition with you?”

“What course?  Why, I shall tell Dr. Talbot just enough to show you to be as desirable a witness in the impending inquest as myself.  The result I leave to your judgment.  But you will not drive me to this extremity.  You will come back and—­”

“Woman, I will never come back.  I shall have to dare your worst in a week and will begin by daring you now.  I—­”

But he did not leap the fence, though he made a move to do so, for at that moment a party of men came hurrying by on the lower road, one of whom was heard to say: 

“I will bet my head that we will put our hand on Agatha Webb’s murderer to-night.  The man who shoves twenty-dollar bills around so heedlessly should not wear a beard so long it leads to detection.”

It was the coroner, the constable, Knapp, and Abel on their way to the forest road on which lived John and James Zabel.

Frederick and Amabel confronted each other, and after a moment’s silence returned as if by a common impulse towards the house.

“What have they got in their heads?” queried she.  “Whatever it is, it may serve to occupy them till the week of your probation is over.”

He did not answer.  A new and overwhelming complication had been added to the difficulties of his situation.