come for?"

"Jason," she cried again, "I wronged you, that is true, but you
forgave me. I asked you to choose for me, and if you had said 'stay,'
I should have stayed. But you released me, you know you did. You gave
me up to him, and now he is my husband."

"But this man is Michael Sunlocks," said Jason.

"Didn't you know that before?" said Greeba. "Ah, then, I know what
you have come for. You have recalled your forgiveness, and have come
to punish me for deserting you. But spare me! Oh, spare me! Not for
my own sake, but his; for I am his wife now and he loves me very
dearly. No, no, not that, but only spare me, Jason," she cried, and
crouched at his feet.

"I would not harm a hair of your head, Greeba," he said.

"Then what have you come for?" she said.

"This man is a son of Stephen Orry," he said.

"Then it is for him," she cried, and leaped to her feet. "Ah, now I
understand. I have not forgotten the night in Port-y-Vullin."

"Does _he_ know of that?" said Jason.

"No."

"Does he know I am here?"

"No."

"Does he know we have met?"

"No."

"Let me see him!"

"Why do you ask to see him?"

"Let me see him."

"But why?" she stammered. "Why see him? It is I who have wronged
you."

"That's why I want to see him," said Jason.

She uttered a cry of terror and staggered back. There was an ominous
silence, in which it passed through Greeba's mind that all that was
happening then had happened before. She could hear Jason's labored
breathing and the dull thud of the music through the walls.

"Jason," she cried, "What harm has he ever done you? I alone am
guilty before you. If your vengeance must fall on anyone let it fall
on me."

"Where is he?" said Jason.

"He is gone," said Greeba.

"Gone?"

"Yes, to find my poor father. The dear old man was wrecked in coming
here, and my husband sent men to find him, but they blundered and
came back empty-handed, and not a half an hour ago he went off
himself."

"Was he riding?" said Jason; but without waiting for an answer he
made towards the door.

"Wait! Where are you going?" cried Greeba.

Swift as lightning the thought had flashed though her mind, "What if
he should follow him!"

Now the door to the room was a heavy, double-hung door of antique
build, and at the next instant she had leaped to it and shot the
heavy wooden bar that bolted it.

At that he laid one powerful hand on the bar itself, and wrenched it
outward across the leverage of