ound very foolish to you.
I cannot help it. I only hope that you will not be angry with me."

Her eyes met his steadily.

"No," she murmured, "I will not be angry--I promise you that. It is
better that I should know exactly what is in your mind. At present I
do not understand."

His manner acquired a new earnestness. He forgot his luncheon and
leaned across the table towards her.

"Fenella," he said, "try and consider how these things of which I am
going to speak must have presented themselves to me. Try, if you
can, and put yourself in my position for a few minutes. Before that
evening on which Mr. Weatherley asked me to come to your house,
nothing in the shape of an adventure had ever happened to me. I had
had my troubles, but they were ordinary ones, such as the whole
world knows of. From the day when I went to school to the day when I
had to leave college hurriedly, lost my father, and came up to
London a pauper, life with me was entirely an obvious affair. From
the night I crossed the threshold of your house, things were
different."

There was a cloud upon her face. She began to drum with her slim
forefingers upon the tablecloth.

"I think that I would rather you did not go on," she said.

He shook his head.

"I must," he declared, fervently. "These things have been in my mind
too long. It is not well for our friendship that I should have such
thoughts and leave them unuttered. On that very first evening--the
first time I ever saw you--you behaved, in a way, strangely. You
took me into your little sitting-room and I could see that you were
in trouble. Something was happening, or you were afraid that it was
going to happen. You sent me to the window to look out and see if
any one were watching the house. You remember all that?"

"Yes," she murmured, "I remember."

"There was some one watching it," Arnold went on. "I told you. I saw
your lips quiver with fear. Then your husband came in and took you
away. You left me there in the room alone. I was to wait for you.
While I was there, one of the men, who had been watching, stole up
through your garden to the very window. I saw his face. I saw his
hand upon the window-sill with that strange ring upon his finger.
You have not forgotten?"

"Forgotten!" she repeated. "As though that were possible!"

"Very well," Arnold continued. "Now let me ask you to remember
another evening, only last week, the night I dined with your
brother. I brought you home from the