iberate, emotionless, hard. "That lady--the original of that
portrait--is still alive, to the best of my belief. At least, she was
not lost at sea on the occasion of the wreck of the _Denver Castle_ five
years ago."

"What?" said Coningsby. He turned suddenly white--white to the lips, and
set down the decanter he was still holding as if he had been struck
powerless. "What?" he said again, with starting eyes upon Carey's face.

"I think you understood me," Carey returned coldly. "I have told you
because, upon consideration, it seemed to me you ought to know."

The thing was done and past recall, but deep in his heart there lurked a
savage resentment against this man who had forced him to break his
silence. He felt no sympathy with him; he only knew disgust.

Coningsby moved suddenly with a frantic oath, and gripped him by the
shoulder. The blood was coming back to his face in livid patches; his
eyes were terrible.

"Go on!" he said thickly. "Out with it! Tell me all you know!"

He towered over Carey. There was violence in his grip, but Carey did
not seem to notice. He faced the giant with absolute composure.

"I can tell you no more," he said. "I knew she was saved, because I was
saved with her. But she left Brittany while I was still too ill to
move."

"You must know more than that!" shouted Coningsby, losing all control of
himself, and shaking his informant furiously by the shoulder. "If she
was saved, how did she come to be reported missing?"

For a single instant Carey hesitated; then, with steady eyes upon the
bloated face above him, he made quiet reply:

"Her name was among the missing by her own contrivance. Doubtless she
had her reasons."

Coningsby's face suddenly changed: his eyes shone red.

"You helped her!" he snarled, and lifted a clenched fist.

Carey's maimed hand came quietly into view, and closed upon the man's
wrist.

"It is not my custom," he coldly said, "to refuse help to a woman."

"Confound you!" stormed Coningsby. "Where is she now? Where? Where?"

There fell a sudden pause. Carey's eyes were like steel; his grasp never
slackened.

"If I knew," he said deliberately, at length, "I should not tell you!
You are not fit for the society of any good woman."

The words fell keen as a whip-lash, and as pitiless. Coningsby glared
into his face like a goaded bull; his look was murderous. And then by
some chance his eyes fell upon the hand that gripped his wrist. He
looked at it closel