She had not spoken so far, partly because she had not been directly
addressed, partly because, as I could see, she was in a hot fury with
the Black Colonel. But the strange fascination of the man was working
on her, as I could also see, and, woman-like, speak she would or die.

"If," she demanded of him quietly, slowly, for she had herself in hand,
"you had anything special, even private to say to me, why did you not
come to the Dower House instead of sending your handy men to scare us
all and run off with me? Whatever you hoped to gain, that, you must
know, was not the way to gain it."

The Black Colonel looked at her composedly for a moment and said,
"Mistress Marget, I am the last person in the world to think that any
form of duress would influence your actions. On the other hand, since
the opportunity has come, I make bold, even in the presence of Captain
Gordon and our respective followers, to say a word in frankness, out of
regard for you and your house. There are events pending which might go
far to re-establish your family, and you should know about them, not
merely indirectly but directly from me, who am deeply concerned in the
business."

Marget blushed and flushed and glanced at me, as if asking me to
protect her from what was very like a manifesto for public knowledge,
thrust upon her when she could not help it. Her unconscious appeal
warmed my heart like the sun, but I held back, preferring she should
give the word which would, once and for all, put the Black Colonel in
his place.

"By what right," she said with dignity, "do you address your proposals
to me as you have done? You have schemed them in an underground way.
Must you commit the affront of offering them to me in public, after
using force to bring me here?"

"I have told you," broke in the Black Colonel, "what I know of Red
Murdo and his doings on this morning, and if you do not believe me,
why, I cannot help it. It may be that I had a plan for meeting you
face to face, but no plan like what has now emerged."

"No," said I, intervening, "your plan was to find Marget alone in this
eerie place, to work on her woman's feelings, her anxiety for her
mother, her regard for her house, all that you might commit her with
the Crown authorities as assenting to the secret negotiations which you
are ripening."

"Doesn't that reflection come oddly from an officer of the Crown," he
retorted, "because I have not heard you have resigned your commissi