e gazed miserably at Elsin, passing his hand over his haggard face.
Then, slowly turning to me: "My honor is engaged, Carus. What is best
now? I am in your hands."

I laid my arm in his, quietly turning him and urging him to the stairs.
"Leave it to me," I whispered, taking the candle he held. "Go to the
coach and wait there. I will be with you in a moment."

The door of Elsin's chamber closed behind us. He descended the black
stairway, feeling his way by touch along the slim rail of the
banisters, and I waited there, lighting him from above until the front
doors clashed behind him. Then I turned back to the closed door of
Elsin's chamber and knocked loudly.

She flung it wide again, standing this time fully dressed, a gilt-edged
tricorn on her head, and in her hands riding-whip and gloves.

"I know what need be done," she said haughtily. "Through this meshed
tangle of treachery and dishonor there leads but one clean path. That I
shall tread, Mr. Renault!"

"Let the words go," I said between tightening lips, "but give me that
pair of pistols, now!"

"For Sir Peter's use?"

"No, for mine."

"I shall not!"

"Oh, you would rather see me hanged, like Captain Hale?"

She whitened where she stood, tugging at her gloves, teeth set in her
lower lip.

"You shall neither fight nor hang," she said, her blue eyes fixed on
space, busy with her gloves the while--so busy that her whip dropped,
and I picked it up.

There was a black loup-mask hanging from her girdle. When her gloves
were fitted to suit her she jerked the mask from the string and set it
over her eyes.

"My whip?" she asked curtly.

I gave it.

"Now," she said, "your pistol-case lies hid beneath my bed-covers. Take
it, Mr. Renault, but it shall serve a purpose that neither you nor
Walter Butler dream of!"

I stared at her without a word. She opened the beaded purse at her
girdle, took from it a heaping handful of golden guineas, and dropped
them on her dresser, where they fell with a pleasant sound, rolling
together in a shining heap. Then, looking through her mask at me, she
fumbled at her throat, caught a thin golden chain, snapped it in two,
and drew a tiny ivory miniature from her breast; and still looking
straight into my eyes she dropped it face upward on the polished floor.
It bore the likeness of Walter Butler. She set her spurred heel upon it
and crushed it, grinding the fragments into splinters. Then she walked
by me, slowly, her eyes sti