ou
mad?" she asked him.

"Very nearly," he answered, with a laugh that was horrible to hear.

She drew back and away from him, bewildered and horrified. Slowly
she rose to her feet. She controlled with difficulty the deep emotion
swaying her. "Tell me," she said slowly, speaking with obvious effort,
"what will they do to Captain Tremayne?"

"What will they do to him?" He looked at her. He was smiling. "They will
shoot him, of course."

"And you wish it!" she denounced him in a whisper of horror.

"Above all things," he answered. "A more poetic justice never overtook a
blackguard."

"Why do you call him that? What do you mean?"

"I will tell you--afterwards, after they have shot him; unless the truth
comes out before."

"What truth do you mean? The truth of how Samoval came by his death?"

"Oh, no. That matter is quite clear, the evidence complete. I mean--oh,
I will tell you afterwards what I mean. It may help you to bear your
trouble, thankfully."

She approached him again. "Won't you tell me now?" she begged him.

"No," he answered, rising, and speaking with finality. "Afterwards if
necessary, afterwards. And now get back to bed, child, and forget the
fellow. I swear to you that he isn't worth a thought. Later I shall hope
to prove it to you."

"That you never will," she told him fiercely.

He laughed, and again his laugh was harsh and terrible in its bitter
mockery. "Yet another trusting fool," he cried. "The world is full of
them--it is made up of them, with just a sprinkling of knaves to batten
on their folly. Go to bed, Sylvia, and pray for understanding of men. It
is a possession beyond riches."

"I think you are more in need of it than I am," she told him, standing
by the door.

"Of course you do. You trust, which is why you are a fool. Trust," he
said, speaking the very language of Polichinelle, "is the livery of
fools."

She went without answering him and toiled upstairs with dragging feet.
She paused a moment in the corridor above, outside Una's door. She was
in such need of communion with some one that for a moment she thought of
going in. But she knew beforehand the greeting that would await her;
the empty platitudes, the obvious small change of verbiage which her
ladyship would dole out. The very thought of it restrained her, and so
she passed on to her own room and a sleepless night in which to piece
together the puzzle which the situation offered her, the amazing enigma
of Sir Teren