you dreaming of? I
have no influence. You talk like a man at his wits' end.'

There was a silence.

'I am a man at his wits' end,' Ravengar murmured, half sadly. 'I trusted
that girl. She knows all my secrets.'

'What secrets?' asked Hugo, struck by the phrase.

'My business secrets, of course. What else do you fancy?'

'My fancy is too active,' said Hugo, with careful casualness. 'It runs
away with me. I was thinking of other sorts of secrets, and of that
curious principle of English law that a wife can't give evidence against
her husband.... You must pardon my fancy,' he added.

'Do you mean to insinuate that my eagerness to marry Camilla Payne is in
order to prevent her from being able to--'

'No, Louis; I mean to insinuate nothing. Can't you see a joke?'

'I cannot,' said Ravengar. 'Not that variety of joke.'

'The appreciation of humour was never your strong point.'

Something in Hugo's manner made Ravengar spring forward; then he checked
himself.

'Owen,' he entreated, 'don't let's quarrel again. I beg you to help me.
Help me, and I'll promise never to interfere with you in your
business--I'll swear it.'

'Then it was you, after all, that instructed Polycarp?'

Ravengar gave an affirmative sign.

'I meant either to get hold of this place or to ruin you. Remember what
I suffered--in the old days.... You see I'm frank with you. Help me.
We're neither of us growing younger. I'm mad for that girl, and I must
have her.'

Hugo put his hands into his pockets, and consulted his toes. This
semi-step-brother of his somehow aroused his compassion.

'No, Louis,' he said; 'I can't.'

'You hate me?'

'Not a bit.'

'Do you think I'm too old to marry, or what is it?'

'It's just like this, Louis, my friend: I have every intention of
marrying Miss Payne myself.'

'You!... Ah!... Indeed!'

'I have so decided. And when I decide, the thing is as good as done.'

'And that's why you were watching last night! Good! Oh, good! Only I
may as well inform you, Owen, that if Camilla Payne marries anyone but
me, there will be murder. And no ordinary murder, either!'

Hugo took a turn in the gallery. He felt genuinely sorry for the gray
and desperate man, driven by the intensity of emotion to utterances
which were merely absurd.

'Louis,' he remarked, with a melancholy kindliness of tone, 'fate has a
grudge against us two. It ruined our youth, and now it's embroiling us
once more. Can't we both be philosophical?