st.

She caught the ring of defiance in his tone. She smiled. There was to be
verbal sword-play, and she was armed _cap-a-pie_.

"Just another cup of tea," she pleaded, and he wriggled uneasily in his
chair. The delay was torturing him. She unrolled her big sheets of
notes. He looked over at them with well-simulated indifference.

"I have an engagement--" he began, looking at his watch.

"You must put it off," she said, with sudden heat. "The most important
engagement of your life is here, now, in this room, William Meiklejohn.
I mentioned the detective bureau when I entered. Which do you prefer to
encounter--me or an emissary of the police?"

He paled again. Evidently this society lady had claws, and would use
them if annoyed.

"I do not think that I have said anything to warrant such language to
me," he murmured, striving to smile deprecatingly. He succeeded but
poorly.

"You sent me to drive out into the world the girl whom my son loved,"
was the retort. "You made a grave mistake in that. I recognized her,
after a little while. I knew her mother. Now, am I to go into details?"

"I--really--I--"

"Very well. Eighteen years ago your brother, Ralph Vane Meiklejohn,
murdered a man named Marchbanks, who had discovered that you and your
brother were defrauding his wife of funds held by your bank as her
trustees. I have here the records of the crime. I do not say that your
brother, who has since been a convict and is now assisting you under the
name of Ralph Voles, could be charged with that crime. Maybe 'murderer'
is too strong a word for him where Marchbanks was concerned; but I do
say that any clever lawyer could send you and him to the penitentiary
for robbing a dead woman and her daughter, the girl whom you and he have
kidnapped within the last week."

Here was a broadside with a vengeance. Meiklejohn could not have endured
a keener agony were he facing a judge and jury. It was one thing to
have borne this terrible secret gnawing at his vitals during long years,
but it was another to find it pitilessly laid bare by a woman belonging
to that very society for which he had dared so much in order to retain
his footing.

He bent his head between his hands. For a few seconds thoughts of
another crime danced in his surcharged brain. But Mrs. Carshaw's
well-bred syllables brought him back to sanity with chill
deliberateness.

"Shall I go on?" she said. "Shall I tell you of Rachel Bartlett; of the
scandal to be