through the heavy ruffle at
his wrist. "Madam, indeed--ah--your ladyship goes very fast. You leap
so at conclusions for which no grounds can exist. His lordship is so
overwrought--as well he may be, alas!--that he cares not before whom he
speaks. Is it not plainly so?"

She smiled very sourly. "You are a very master of evasion, sir. But your
evasion gives me the answer that I lack--that and his lordship's face.
I drew my bow at a venture; yet look, sir, and tell me, has my quarrel
missed its mark?"

And, indeed, the sudden fear and consternation written on my lord's face
was so plain that all might read it. He was--as Mr. Caryll had remarked
on the first occasion that they met--the worst dissembler that ever
set hand to a conspiracy. He betrayed himself at every step, if not
positively, by incautious words, why then by the utter lack of control
he had upon his countenance.

He made now a wild attempt to bluster. "Lies! Lies!" he protested. "Your
ladyship's a-dreaming. Should I be making bad worse by plotting at my
time of life? Should I? What can King James avail me, indeed?"

"'Tis what I will ask Rotherby to help me to discover," she informed
him.

"Rotherby?" he cried. "Would you tell that villain what you suspect?
Would you arm him with another weapon for my undoing?"

"Ha!" said she. "You admit so much, then?" And she laughed disdainfully.
Then with a sudden sternness, a sudden nobility almost in the motherhood
which she put forward--"Rotherby is my son," she said, "and I'll not
have my son the victim of your follies as well as of your injustice. We
may curb the one and the other yet, my lord."

And she swept out, fan going briskly in one hand, her long ebony cane
swinging as briskly in the other.

"O God!" groaned Ostermore, and sat down heavily.

Mr. Caryll helped himself copiously to snuff. "I think," said he, his
voice so cool that it had an almost soothing influence, "I think your
lordship has now another reason why you should go no further in this
matter."

"But if I do not--what other hopes have I? Damn me! I'm a ruined man
either way."

"Nay, nay," Mr. Caryll reminded him. "Assuming even that you are
correctly informed, and that his Grace of Wharton is determined to move
against you, it is not to be depended that he will succeed in collecting
such evidence as he must need. At this date much of the evidence that
may once have been available will have been dissipated. You are rash to
despair s