“That settles it!” exclaimed he, excitedly, the fever of joy in his eyes.  “He killed her when he found that she had been to you.  Perhaps, goaded to desperation, she confessed to him.  Imagine the devilish delight he took in sniffing out her life after that!  We have him now!  Dorothy, you know as well as I that he and he alone had an object in killing her.  You have only to tell the story of her visit to you and we’ll hang the miserable coward.”  He was standing before her, eager-eyed and intense.

“You forget that I am not and do not for some time expect to be in a position to expose him.  I am inclined to believe that the law will first require me to testify against you, Philip Quentin,” she said, looking fairly into his eyes, the old resentment returning like a flash.  Afterward she knew that the look of pain in his face touched her heart, but she did not know it then.  She saw the beaten joy go out of his eyes, and she rejoiced in the victory.

“True,” he said, softly.  “I have saved the woman I love, while he has merely killed one who loved him.”  It angered her unreasonably when, as he turned to enter the house, Lady Saxondale put her arm through his and whispered something in his ear.  A moment or two later Lady Jane, as if unable to master the emotion which impelled, hurried into the castle after them.  Dickey strolled away, and she was left with Lord Bob.  It would have been a relief had he expressed the slightest sign of surprise or regret, but he was as imperturbable as the wall against which he leaned.  His mild blue eyes gazed carelessly at the coils of smoke that blew from his lips.

“Oh,” she wailed to herself, in the impotence of anger, “they all love him, they all hate me!  Why does he not mistreat me, insult me, taunt me—­anything that will cost him their respect, their devotion!  How bitterly they feel toward me for that remark!  It will kill me to stay here and see them turn to him as if he were some god and I the defiler!”

That night there was a battle between the desire to escape and the reluctance she felt in exposing her captors to danger.  In the end she admitted to herself that she would not have Philip Quentin seized by the officers:  she would give them all an equal chance to escape, he with the others.  Her heart softened when she saw him, in her imagination, alone and beaten, in the hands of the police, led away to ignominy and death, the others perhaps safe through his loyalty.  She would refuse absolutely, irrevocably, to divulge the names of her captors and would go so far as to perjure herself to save them if need be.  With that charitable resolution in her heart she went to sleep.

When she arose the next morning, Baker told her that Mr. Quentin was ill.  His cold had settled on his lungs and he had a fever.  Lady Saxondale seemed worried over the rather lugubrious report from Dickey Savage, who came downstairs early with Phil’s apologies for not presenting himself at the breakfast table.