he reseated himself he stooped
to pick it up, and, looking at it with a critical eye, began to smoke
again. I verily believe that if any stranger had been present, I might
have been supposed to be the more disturbed and self-conscious of the
two. Perhaps I was, for throughout the whole of this singular interview
I was haunted by a wondering inquiry as to what I should do with the man
when I had completely exposed his infamy. I dare say I was a fool from
the first to feel so, though I could not help it; but to surrender him
to the vengeance he had invited seemed altogether an impossibility. In
that respect at least he had me at a disadvantage, and I cannot help
thinking that he knew it.

"The Baroness Bonnar!" I echoed. He made no answer, but leaned back
in my arm-chair, smoking with an outside tranquillity, as if the whole
affair were no business of his. "The Baroness Bonnar!" I repeated,
and he gave a brief nod in affirmation. "And what," I asked, "does she
propose to pay you for this unspeakable rascality?"

A decanter and a water-jug stood upon the table, and he helped himself,
holding up his tumbler against the light to judge of the amount of
spirit he had taken before adding the water he needed. When his
shaking hand jerked the jug and he had taken more water than he thought
necessary, he sipped critically at the contents of the tumbler and added
a little more spirit. Then he sipped again, and settled himself back
into his chair, as if resigned to boredom. I knew I had only to speak a
word to put all these airs to flight, but I hesitated to speak it.

"What does she pay you?" I asked again, and he turned upon me with a
wretched attempt at a smile and a wave of the hand in which he held his
cigar.

"It isn't usual to discuss these things," he answered.

"You wish me to understand," I said, "that for the sake of an amour
with a woman of her age you have broken the most sacred oath a man could
take, and have betrayed to life-long misery an old man who trusted you,
and who never did you any harm. You have confessed yourself contemptible
already, but surely you have a better excuse for your own villainy than
this?" He was still silent, and smoked on with the same effort after an
outward seeming of tranquillity, though his white face and shaking hand
belied him. "What did you get in money?"

"Look here, Fyffe," he answered, inspecting the ash of his cigar with
the aspect of a connoisseur, and evading my glance, "yo