le. "How should I know that?"

"Well... I know it, anyway."

He seemed moved by that statement. He leaned forward with an odd
eagerness, behind which there was something terrible that went
unperceived by her.

"Why did you not say so before? How do you know? What do you know?"

"I am sure that he did not."

"Yes, yes. But what makes you so sure? Do you possess some knowledge
that you have not revealed?"

He saw the colour slowly shrinking from her cheeks under his burning
gaze. So she was not quite shameless then, after all. There were limits
to her effrontery.

"What knowledge should I possess?" she filtered.

"That is what I am asking."

She made a good recovery. "I possess the knowledge that you should
possess yourself," she told him. "I know Ned for a man incapable of such
a thing. I am ready to swear that he could not have done it."

"I see: evidence as to character." He sack back into his chair and
thoughtfully stirred his chocolate. "It may weigh with the court. But I
am not the court, and my mere opinions can do nothing for Ned Tremayne."

Her ladyship looked at him wildly. "The court?" she cried. "Do you mean
that I shall have to give evidence?"

"Naturally," he answered. "You will have to say what you saw."

"But--but I saw nothing."

"Something, I think."

"Yes; but nothing that can matter."

"Still the court will wish to hear it and perhaps to examine you upon
it."

"Oh no, no!" In her alarm shy half rose, then sank again to her chair.
"You must keep me out of this, Terence. I couldn't--I really couldn't."

He laughed with an affectation of indulgence, masking something else.

"Why," he said, "you would not deprive Tremayne of any of the advantages
to be derived from your testimony? Are you not ready to bear witness as
to his character? To swear that from your knowledge of the man you are
sure he could not have done such a thing? That he is the very soul of
honour, a man incapable of anything base or treacherous or sly?"

And then at last Sylvia, who had been watching them, and seeking to
apply to what she heard the wild expressions that Sir Terence had used
to herself last night, broke into the conversation.

"Why do you apply these words to Captain Tremayne?" she asked.

He turned sharply to meet the opposition he detected in her. "I don't
apply them. On the contrary, I say that, as Una knows, they are not
applicable."

"Then you make an unnecessary statement, a statement that