her, peering nearer
with each query. He meant them to be like thrusts of the dagger which
he now threw on the desk. Her eyes fell in unfeigned confusion under his
look, her mind running many ways to come on the meaning beneath this
preposterous guess. She looked up to him, seeking a hint, but his eyes
were inscrutable, his mouth set in a sagacious smile, intimating,
accusing. She looked down again, suddenly feeling it wise to let him
think as he did--whatever absurd thing it might be. She sighed deeply,
relaxed in her chair and met his eyes again. Teevan beheld a woman
defenseless to his insight; one too proud to confess in words, but too
weak, too vindictive, perhaps, to attempt denial.

"I see, my girl--don't trouble to speak." He replenished his glass from
the decanter. He was delighted with his penetration; pleased, also, to
believe that here was an ally, if one should be needed. He glanced at
her again. She sat silent and drooping.

"You did well to come to me, Eleanor. I fancy you'll be interested to
know what our young friend is about to encounter."

"Oh, I shall, I shall! Tell me, please." He smiled at her eagerness, so
poorly subdued, recording in a mental footnote the viperish fury of a
woman in her plight. Still, he thought she carried it off rather well.
There had been need for his keenness to read her secret.

"I'll tell you, my girl, and I'm jolly glad to find some one who can
enjoy it with me. What am I going to do with him?" He rose and paced the
room for so long a time that she felt she could not bear it. She was
about to speak when he abruptly halted and faced her with a petrifying
burst of malignance. "What am I going to do with him?--wring him, wreck
him, choke him, fling the fool back on his dung heap to rot!" She
stared at him, panting; then, summoning all her ingenuity she smiled
slowly above the sickening fear that had rushed over her. Teevan glowed.
That smile of hers--he could detect something relentless in it--was a
tribute to his prowess no less than a confirmation of his power to read
her.

"I don't understand," she half whispered, still with that restrained
fierceness that gave him joy.

"Of course you don't. Am I to be read as a primer? I'm subtler, I trust,
than an earthquake, a cyclone, a deluge. You don't understand, but you
shall." He paced the floor again with a foppish air of pride. "Ah, it
has worked so beautifully. Really, I've regretted there was no one I
could let in to e