ed it relentlessly,
and with as much theatrical gesture as she could command. She raised the
revolver till it was level with Miss Spencer's face, and suddenly a new,
queer feeling took hold of her. She knew that she would indeed use that
revolver now, if the miserable woman before her drove her too far.
She felt afraid--afraid of herself; she was in the grasp of a savage,
primeval instinct. In a flash she saw Miss Spencer dead at her feet--the
police--a court of justice--the scaffold. It was horrible.

'Speak,' she said hoarsely, and Miss Spencer's face went whiter.

'Tom did say,' the woman whispered rapidly, awesomely, 'that if Prince
Eugen got to London it would upset his scheme.'

'What scheme? What scheme? Answer me.'

'Heaven help me, I don't know.' Miss Spencer sank into a chair. 'He said
Mr Dimmock had turned tail, and he should have to settle him and then
Rocco--'

'Rocco! What about Rocco?' Nella could scarcely hear herself. Her grip
of the revolver tightened.

Miss Spencer's eyes opened wider; she gazed at Nella with a glassy
stare.

'Don't ask me. It's death!' Her eyes were fixed as if in horror.

'It is,' said Nella, and the sound of her voice seemed to her to issue
from the lips of some third person.

'It's death,' repeated Miss Spencer, and gradually her head and
shoulders sank back, and hung loosely over the chair. Nella was
conscious of a sudden revulsion. The woman had surely fainted. Dropping
the revolver she ran round the table. She was herself again--feminine,
sympathetic, the old Nella. She felt immensely relieved that this had
happened. But at the same instant Miss Spencer sprang up from the chair
like a cat, seized the revolver, and with a wild movement of the arm
flung it against the window. It crashed through the glass, exploding as
it went, and there was a tense silence.

'I told you that you were a fool,' remarked Miss Spencer slowly, 'coming
here like a sort of female Jack Sheppard, and trying to get the best of
me.

We are on equal terms now. You frightened me, but I knew I was a
cleverer woman than you, and that in the end, if I kept on long enough,
I should win.

Now it will be my turn.'

Dumbfounded, and overcome with a miserable sense of the truth of Miss
Spencer's words, Nella stood still. The idea of her colossal foolishness
swept through her like a flood. She felt almost ashamed. But even at
this juncture she had no fear. She faced the woman bravely, her mind
leapin